Though the introduction of Christianity did not do away with slavery, it tended to ameliorate the condition of the slave. Justinian did much .to promote the eventual extinction of slavery; and the church excommunicated slave-owners who put their • slaves to death without warrant from the judge. But the number of slaves again increased; multitudes being brought with them by the barbarian invaders, who were mostly Slavonian captives (whence our word slave); and in the,countries which had been provinces of the empire, slavery continued long after the empire had fallen to pieces, and eventually merged into the mitigated condition known as serfdom, which prevailed all over Europe in the middle ages, and has been gradually abolished in modern times. See SERF. But though the practice of captives taken in war as slaves ceased in the Christian countries of Europe, a large traffic in slaves continued among Mohamme dan nations, by whom Christian captives were sold in Asia and Africa ;• and in the early middle ages the Venetian merchants traded largely in slaves, whom they purchased on the coast of Slavonia, to supply the slave-markets of the Saracens.
The. negro slavery of modern times was a sequel to the discovery of America. Prior, however, to that event, the negroes, like other savage races, enslaved those captives in war whom they did not put to death, and a considerable trade in slaves from the coast of Guinea was carried on by the Arabs. The deportation of the Africans to the planta tions and mines of the New World doubtless raised the value of the captive negro, and made slavery rather than death his common fate; while it may also have tempted the petty princes to make war on each other, for the purpose of acquiring captives, and sell ing them. The aborigines of America having proved too weak for the work required of them, the Portuguese, who possessed a large part of the African coast, began the impor tation of negroes, in which they were followed by the other colonizers of the New World. The first part of the New World in which negroes were extensively used was Hayti, in St. Domingo. The aboriginal population had at first been employed in the mines; but this sort of labor was found so fatal to their constitutions that Las Cases, bishop of Chiapa, the celebrated protector of the Indians, interceded with Charles for the substitu tion of African slaves as a stronger race; the emperor accordingly, in 1517, authorized a large importation of negroes from the establishments of the Portuguese on the coast of Guinea. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman who engaged in the traffic, in which his countrymen soon largely participated, England having exported no fewer than 800,000 slaves from Africa between the years 1680 and 1700, and between 1700 and 1786, imported 610,000 into Jamaica alone. The slave-trade was attended with extreme inhu manity; the ships which transported the negroes from Africa to America were over crowded fo such an extent that a large proportion died in the passage; and the treatment of the slave after his arrival in the New World depended much on the character of his master. Legal restraints were, however, imposed in the various European settlements, to protect the slaves from injury; in the British colonies, courts were instituted to hear their complaints; their condition was to a certain extent ameliorated, and the flogging.
of women was prohibited. But while slavery was thus legalized in the British colonies, it was at the same time the law of England (as decided in 1772 in the case of the negro Somerset), that as soon as a slave set his foot on English soil lie became free; though, if he returned to his master's country, he could be reclaimed.
Before the idea of emancipation was contemplated, the efforts of the more humane portion of the public were directed toward the abolition of the traffic in slaves. In 1787 a society for the suppression of the slave-trarle•vas formed in London, numbering Messrs. W. Dellwyn, Thomas Clarkson, and Granville Sharp among its original members. The most active parliamentary leader in the cause was Mr. William Wilberforce, whose views were seconded by 31r. Pitt. In February. 1788, an order of the crown directed that an inquiry should be made by a committee of the privy-council into the state of the slave trade; and an act was passed to regulate the burden of slave-ships, and otherwise dimia-, ish the horrors of the middle-passage. A bill introduced by Mr. Wilberforce for putting an end to the further importation of slaves was lost in 1791. Meanwhile, our conquest of the Dutch colonies having led to a great increase in the British slave-trade, an order in council in 1805 prohibited that traffic in the conquered colonies; and in the following year, an act was passed forbidding British subjects to take part in it, either for the sup ply of the conquered colonies or of foreign possessions. In the same year, a resolution moved by Mr. Fox for a total abolition next session, was carried in the commons, and on lord Granville's motion, adopted in the lords; and the following year, the genera] aboli tion hill, nicking all slave-trade.illegal after Jan. 1, 1808, was introduced by lord Howick (afterward earl Grey) in the house of commons, was carried in both houses, and received the royal assent QII Mar. 25, 1807. British subjects, however, continued to carry on the trade tinder cover of the Spanish and Portuguese flags; the slave-ships were more crowded than ever, from the necessity of avoiding capture, and the negroes were not Infrequently thrown overboard on a pursuit. The pecuniary penalties of the act were discovered to be inadequate to put down a traffic so lucrative as to cover all losses by capture. Mr. Brougham therefore, in 1311, introduced a bill, which was carried unani mously, making the slave-trade felony, punishable with 14 years' transportation, or from three to five years' imprisonment with hard labor. An act of 1824 declared it piracy, and as such, a capital crime, if committed within the admiralty jurisdiction; and the statute of 1837, mitigating the criminal code, left it punishable with transportation for life. Among the philanthropic projects due to the exertions of the anti-slavery society was the establishment of the colony of Sierra Leone, on the coast of Africa, which had been formed by the British government in 1787, in order to show the possibility of obtaining colonial produce without slave-labor, and after the abolition of the slave-trade, became a settlement for the negroes captured by British cruisers.