RUM AND SLAVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 11 (Supplement)

RUM AND SLAVES.

IN AMERICA'S EARLY DAYS. OVER TWO WLUOir BLACKS. EAMEETOATttOXS OF THE TRAFFIC. Rum and slaves -were at "One {bottom of everything in the American colonies, and law evasion became habitual with the colonists; so it is no wonder that trade ethtes in 1764 permitted Simeon Potter to give Captain Earle written instructione: "Worter yr rum ae much as poe»ibto and sell is mndh by the short mesuer as you can." Restricted in manufacturers by the Mother Oonntry, tlhe colonists worked up an enormous trade by importing molasses from the West Indies, making rum (in 1730 Massachusettte alone had 63 daetilleries) and exchanging it for slaves. The colonists practically ignored the Molasses Act, forbidding the importation from the French West Indies, and molasses smuggling was customary after 1733. England and the European countries quit the slave trade in 1808 and tried to put it down. The United Stales prohibited it, but did not enforce the prohibition. Slaves fell to £4 ia Africa and brought £120 in America. They were bootlegged at a profit of £60,000 a cargo; and David B. Mitchell, governor of Georgia, resigned office to participate. How the colonists looked on these matters may Ibe (gathered from the words of the great Benjamin Franklin. When he witnessed some rum-crazed Indians murdering each other, he confided to his diary: "If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages, in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means." The stench of a slave ship carried for miles at sea and conditions were terrible. Blacks were packed solidly into compartments 3ft lOin high, and lay there anywhere from weeks to months— stark naked, as a rag of clothing would breed disease. 600 Overboard: To convict, it was ruled necessary to find negroes; and one -tale has come down of a slaver with 600 black*, in the hold, cornered by three men r of-war at nightfall just as the wind died. Escape was impossible; how could be get rid was impossible; how could he get rid of the big anchor along the vessel, just. outside the rail, the slaves were brought up at midnight in tens and tied to the chain. When all .ras ready, at a single word of command, the ropes holding the chain were cut. A shriek I A .eplash! Chain, anchor and the entire cargo disappeared, and all was silence and darkness. In the morning, when the officers came, there was not a black to be seen. The inspector commented on "the shackles and other evidences of the recent presence of salves; the captain smiled. He was not arrested. In this way 2,130,000 negro slaves were. imported into the British colonies in America and the West Indies between 1680 and 1786. Some were born in slavery. Some were captured in war, and "it was natural that when slaves were scarce the white traders, would encourage war." Slavery, was a punishment for offences, and a person could be sold for debt: "If the debt was Urge, a man's whole family might be enslaved." Abolishing the Traffic There is no end to the ramifications of"the traffic. The colonists, however, were taking the only road to wealth, and were, moreover, following the example of the Mother Country. It was in 1502 that the first unwilling exodus of negroes began. Spain was early in the market for a minimum of 30,000 blacks annually for her mines in South America, and these a royal English company undertook to supply. In 16<>3, the Jesus, one of the first slave ships, was owned by Queen Elizabeth. "By 1695 the traffic in negroes had become the most important branch of British commerce." By 1752, Liverpool had 87 vessels in the slave trade, Bristol 157 and London 135. To atone partly for their ISth century supremacy in the slave trade, England was the first to take effective measures to abolish it. Enforcement depended on each country allowing the warships of the others to search her own merchantmen for slaves. England paid Spain £400,000 for her help. The United States passed a prohibitory law in 1807, but as she refused right of search to foreign vessels, the trade flourished there —illicitly but briskly—until 1842, when the right to search was conceded by the Ashburton Treaty.