lil^^TORY OF THE TRADE TO GUINEA. 405 
IHspanioIa, where he sold them and his English commodities, and loaded 
his three vessels with hides, sugar, ginger, &c. with which he returned 
home, in 1662, making a prosperous voyage.” As it proved lucrative, 
the trade was continued both by Hawkins and others, as appears from 
the Naval Chronicle, p. 55 ; where it is said, that “ on the eighteenth 
of October, 1564, captain John Hawkins, with two ships, of seven 
hundred, and one hundred and forty tons, sailed for Africa ; that on 
the eighth of December, they anchored south of Cape Verd, while the 
captain manned the boat, and sent eighty men in armour into the 
country, to see if they could take some negroes ; but the natives flying 
from them, they returned to their ships, and proceeded farther down 
the coast. Here they staid certain days, sending their men on shore, 
in order,” as the author says, “ to burn and spoil their towns, and 
take the inhabitants. The land they observed to be well cultivated, 
there being plenty of grain and fruit of several sorts, and the towns 
prettily laid out.” 
On the. twenty-fifth, being informed by the Portuguese of a towm of 
negroes called Bymha, where there was not only a quantity of gold, 
but one hundred and forty inhabitants, they resolved to attack it, 
having the Portuguese for their guides ; but by mismanagement they 
took but ten negroes, having seven of their own men killed and twenty- 
seven w'ounded. They then went farther down the coast, when having 
procured a number of negroes, they proceeded to the West Indies, 
where they sold them to the Spaniards.” It is added, that in 1567, 
Francis Drake, before performing his voyage round the w^orld, went 
with sir John Hawkins on his expedition to the coast of Guinea, where, 
taking in a cargo of slaves, they determined to steer for the Carib- 
bee islands.” 
How queen Elizabeth suffered so grievous an infringement of the 
rights of mankind to be perpetrated by her subjects, and how she 
was persuaded, about the thirtieth year of her reign, to grant patents 
for carrying on a trade from the north part of the Senegal to one 
hundred leagues beyond Sierra Leone, is hard to account for, other- 
wise than that it arose from a misrepresentation made to her of the 
situation of the negroes, and of the advantages it was pretended they 
would reap from their being made acquainted with the Christian reli- 
gion. This was the case of Louis XilL of France ; who, Labat, in 
his Account of the Isles of America, tells us, ** was extremely uneasy 
at a law by which the negroes of his colonies were to be made slaves ; 
but it being strongly urged to him as the readiest means of their 
conversion to Christianity, he acquiesced therewith.” Nevertheless, 
some of the Christian powers did not so easily give w'ay in this mat- 
ter; for we find, that ^‘cardinal Cilio, one of the pope’s principal 
ministers of state, wrote a letter, on behalf of the college of cardinals, 
to the missionaries in Congo, complaining that the pernicious and 
abominable abuse of selling slaves was yet continued, — requiring them 
to remedy the same, if possible ; but this the missionaries saw little 
hopes of accomplishing, by reason that the trade of the country lay 
wholly in slaves and ivory.” 
It has been urged, in justification of this trade, that by pur- 
chasing the captives taken in battle, they save the lives of so many 
