The northern tribes which invaded the Western empire had their own slaves, who were chiefly Slavonian captives, distinct from the slaves of the Romans or conquered inhabitants. In course of time, however, the various classes of slaves merged into one class, that of the adscripti glebse," or serfs of the middle ages, and the institution of Roman slavery in its unmitigated form became obliterated. The precise period of this change cannot be fixed; it took place at various times in different countries. Slaves were exported from Britain to the Continent in the Saxon period. Giraldus Cambrensis, William of Malmesbury, end others, accuse the Anglo-Saxons of selling their female servants and even their children to strangers, and especially to the Irish, and the practice continued even after the Norman conquest. In the canons of a council held at London, a.n. 1102, it is said, " Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men in England have been hitherto sold like brute animals." (Wilkin's Comilla; i. p 383.) But although the traffic in slaves ceased among the Christian nations of Europe, it continued to be carried on by the Venetians across the Mediterranean in the age of the Crusades. The Venetians supplied the markets of the Saracens with slaves purchased from the Slavonian tribes which bordered on the Adriatic. Besides, as personal slavery and the traffic in slaves continued in all Mohammedan countries, Christian captives taken by Mussulmans were sold in the markets of Asia and Northern Africa, and have continued to be sold till within our ()en times, when Christian slavery has been abolished in Barbary, Egypt, and the Ottoman empire, by the interference of the Christian powers, the emancipation of Greece, and the conquest of Algiers by the French.
With the discovery of America. a new description of slavery and slave-trade arose. Christian nations purchased African Degrees for the purpose of employing them in the mines and plantations of the New World. The natives of America were too weak and too indolent to undergo the hard work which their Spanish task-masters exacted of them, and they died in great numbers. Las Cases, a Dominican, advocated with a persevering energy before the court of Spain the cause of the American aborigines, and reprobated the system of the " repartiraientoe," by which they were distributed in Iota like cattle among their new masters. But it was necessary for the settlements to be made profitable in order to satisfy the conquerors, and it was suggested that negroes from Africa, a more robust and active race than the American Indians, might be substituted for them. It was stated that an able-bodied negro could do as much work as four Indians. The Portuguese were at that time possessed of a great part of the coast of Africa, where they easily obtained by force or barter a con siderable number of slaves. The trade in slaves among the nations of Africa had existed from time immemorial. It had been carried on in ancient times : the Garsmantes used to supply the slave-dealers of Carthage, Cyrene, and Egypt with black slaves which they'brought from the interior. The demand for slaves by the Portuguese in the Atlantic harbours gave the trade a fresh direction. The petty chiefs of the interior made predatory incursions into each other's territories, and sold their captives, and sometimes their own subjects, to the European traders. The first negroes were imported by the Portuguese from Africa to the Weat Indies in 1503, and in 1511 Ferdinand the Catholic allowed a larger importation. These, however, were private and partial speculations; it is said that Cardinal Ximenes was opposed to the trade because he considered it unjust. Charles V., however, being pressed on one side by the demand for labour in the American settlements, and on the other by Las Cases and others who pleaded the cause of the Indian natives, granted to one of his Flemish courtiers the exclusive privilege of importing 4000 blacks to the West Indies. The Fleming sold his privilege for 25,000 ducats to some Genoese merchants, who organised a regular slave-trade between Africa and America. As the European settlements in America increased and extended, the demand for slaves also increased; and all European nations who had colonies in America shared in the slave-trade. It is generally understood that the slaves of the Spaniards, especially in Continental America, were the best treated of all. But the negro slaves in general were exactly in the same condition as the Roman slaves of old, being saleable, and punishable at the will of their owners Restrictions, however, were gradually introduced by the laws of the respective states, in order to protect the life of the negro slave against the caprice or brutality of his owner. In the British colonies,
especially in the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present, much was dune by the legislature; courts were established to hear the complaints of the slaves, flogging of females was forbidden, the punishment of males was also limited within certain bounds, and the condition of the slave population was greatly ameliorated. Still the advocates of emancipation objected to the principle of slavery as being unjust and unchristian ; and they also appealed to experience to show that a human being cannot be safely trusted solely to the mercy of another.
But long before they attempted to emancipate the slaves, the efforts of philanthropists were directed to abolish the slave traffic, which desolated Africa, wholly prevented its advance in civilisation, and encouraged the maltreatment of the Degrees in the colonies, by affording an unlimited supply, and making it not the planter's interest to keep up his stuck in the natural way. The attention of mankind was first effectually awakened to the horrors of this trade by Thomas Clarkson. His labours. with the aid of the zealous men, chiefly Quakers, who early joined him, prepared the way for Mr. Wilberforce, who brought the subject before parliament in 1788. and although, after his notice, the motion. owing to his accidental illness, was first brought forward by Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce was throughout the great parliamentary leader in the cause, powerfully supported in the country by Thomas Clarkson and others, as Richard Phillips, George Harrison, William Allen, all of the Society of Friends, 31r. Stephen, who had been in the West Indies as a barrister, and Mr. Z. Macaulay, who Lad been governor of Sierra Leone, and had also resided in Jamaica. A bill was first carried (brought in by Sir W. Dolben) to regulate the trade until it could be abolished, and this in some degree diminished the horrors of the middle passage. But the question of abolition was repeatedly defeated, until 1804, when Mr. Wilberforce first carried the bill through the Commons ; it was thrown out in the Lords. and next year it was again lost even in the Commons. Mean while the capture of the foreign colonies, especially the Dutch, during the war, frightfully increased the amount of the trade, by opening these settlements to British capital ; and at one time the whole importation df slaves by British vessels amounted to nearly 60,000 yearly, of which about a third was for the supply of our old colonies. At length, in 1S05, an order in council prohibited the slave-trade in the conquered colonies. Next year the administration of Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox -carried a bill through, prohibiting British subjects from engaging in the trade for supplying either foreign settle ments or the conquered colonies. A resolution moved by Mr. Fox, the last time he took any part in public debate, was also carried in 1806, pledging the Commons to a total abolition of the trade early next session, and this was, ou Lord Grenville's motion, adopted by the Lords. Accordingly next year the General Abolition Bill was brought in by Lord Howiek (afterwards Earl Grey), and being passed by both houses, received the royal assent on the 25th of March, 1807. This act prohibited slave-trading from and after the 1st of January, 1808 ; but as it only subjected offenders to pecuniary penalties. it was found that something more was required to put down a traffic the gains of which were so great as to cover all losses by capture. In 1810 the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Brougham, passed unani mously a resolution, pledging itself early next session effectually to prevent " such daring violations of the law ;" and he next year carried a bill making slave-trading felony, punishable by fourteen yearss transportation, or imprisonment with hard labour. In 1824 the laws relating to the slave-trade were consolidated, and it was further declared to be piracy, and punishable capitally, if committed within the Admiralty jurisdict.on. In 1837 this was changed to transportation for life, by the meta diminishing the number of capital punishments. Since the Felony Act of 1811, the British colonies have entirely ceased to have any concern in this traffic. If any British subjects have engaged in it, or any British capital has been embarked in it, the offence has been committed in the foreign trade.