456 



THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 



measures was known only to few, and those few 

 hardly cared to speak out. England, ripe for free 

 labour, had resolved to throw off the African ; she 

 kicked away, to use a popular phrase, the ladder 

 by which she had risen, and she made slavery, for 

 which she had shed her best blood in the days of 

 Queen Anne, the sum of all villanies in the reign 

 of King George. This was natural. The steps 

 by which nations attain to the summit of civiliza- 

 tion appear, as they are beheld from above, grada- 

 tions of mere barbarism : to revert to them would 

 be as possible as to enjoy the nursery tales which 

 enlivened our childhood. 



Other European peoples were not in the con- 

 dition of England to dispense with slave labour, 

 but the termination of a long continental war was 

 made the inducement to sign abolition treaties. 

 All were so much waste-paper, not being based 

 upon public opinion. As long as Cuba and the 

 slave-importers of the Western world required 

 (a.d. 1830 — 57) an annual supply of 100,000 men, 

 their demands were supplied. Neither the word 

 piracy, nor the prospect of hanging from the 

 yard-arm — a remedy more virulent than the dis- 

 ease — could deter adventurers from engaging in 

 a trade where a 'pretty girl ' was to be £ bought for 

 a few rolls of tobacco, fathoms of flannel, and 



