1 It has been much the fashion to speak of the corsairs who gave England her supremacy upon the sea as if they were men inflamed by a zeal for Protestantism, who, to revenge the atrocities of the Inquisition, levied private war on Spain. But such a view of the facts has only a tinge of truth, for it reverses the order of events. The English piracies came first, then followed the retributions of Spain, and lastly the fiery indignation of the Englishman which had such a marked effect on European history. Long and earnestly did Spain, whose king was friendly to England, labor to keep the peace. The English minister at Madrid expostulated with his government, described the outrages committed on Spanish commerce, and foretold the certainty of retaliation; but it was all in vain. The old wild blood was up, the blood which coursed through the veins of Saxon, Dane, and Norseman. After the lapse of centuries, the Englishman had again found his natural element and calling. Friend and foe, Protestant and Romanist, Dutchman, Frenchman, Portuguese, and Spaniard, all were plundered alike. It was not war, but simple pillage and murder. In 1563, long before hostilities with Spain were thought of, a Spanish vessel sailed from Flanders with a cargo valued at eighty thousand ducats. Thomas Cobham, son of Lord Cobham of Cowling Castle, chanced to be cruising in the Channel. Catching sight of the vessel, he chased her down into the Bay of Biscay, fired into her, killed a number of the crew, and boarding, after all resistance had ceased, sewed up the survivors in their own sails burghers, squires, or knights, whose inclination led that way, kept their ambiguous cruisers, and levied war on their own account when the government lagged behind its duty."-Froude, viii. 449. DEVELOPMENT AND EXTENT OF THE INDUSTRY 391 and threw them overboard. Then, scuttling the ship, he made off with the booty to his pirate den in the South of Ireland.* Even the inoffensive Dutch fishermen, although Protestants, did not escape, and perhaps they were the worst sufferers of all. The English constantly boarded their fishing smacks, took out everything, down even to the clothing of the men, and left them naked to drift at the mercy of the waves. Of course, the government had, at times, to make a pretence of prosecuting the offenders; but, remembering the way in which justice was then administered, the farcical results can be readily imagined. Cobham, the year after the exploit above narrated, was tried for piracy in London, at the urgent demand of the Spanish minister. The evidence against him was complete, but he escaped conviction in the usual manner, and was soon back at his old occupation. In 1566, the English authorities, while trying to excuse their conduct towards Spain, were forced to admit that they had never executed a single pirate.t Thus the industry grew and flourished. The English allowed other people to catch their fish; they helped themselves after the hauls were made. They permitted the Netherlanders to manufacture all the finer products of the loom, content to take their share, in the good old way, after the work was done. Nearly every gentleman along the western coast, whether Protestant or Catholic, was engaged in the business. Their manor houses were filled with the spoils of their cruisers, and the surplus went to London, where the pirates sunned themselves in the rays of royal favor. The occupation * Froude, viii. 460. + Idem, viii. 478. had come to stay. The men who beat off the Spanish Armada did a noble work for England and the world, but they were pirates none the less. Throughout the entire reign of Elizabeth they were preying on the commerce of their Dutch allies; and Henry IV. of France, in 1603, declined an invitation to visit England, from fear that they would capture him while crossing the Channel.* If now it seems strange that the Continental powers permitted this piracy to flourish so long in England, we must remember that it continued in Algiers, her rival in the business, down to the year 1830, despite the combined efforts of all Christendom. The one was protected by the Mediterranean and the sands of Africa, the other by the broad "deep ditch" which divided her from the Continent. Out of her piracies in the Channel and along the coast grew up England's slave-trade and this led to piratical expeditions on the wider scale, to be followed by results of great moment. From quite an early day the Portuguese explorers of Africa had carried on a slave-trade with the natives. It began about 1442, when ten black men, who had been exchanged for some Moorish captives, were brought to Portugal and astonished the Europeans by their color. Thenceforward negroes, both bond and free, were quite common in the cities of the Peninsula, although the traffic in human flesh was not extensive, since, at the close of the century, the number of blacks exported from Africa did not exceed a few hundred annually. They were mostly used as house-servants, nothing in the soil or climate *Motley's "United Netherlands," iv. 146-151. + Helps's "Spanish Conquests in America," i. 43-86, Harper's ed. NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA 393 tempting the agriculturist to employ them on the land. Unfortunately, the discovery of the New World opened up a field of a different character, one in which slave labor was very profitable, while even misguided philanthropy lent its aid to aggravate the evil. It is an error, long ago exploded, to suppose that negro slavery was first introduced into America through the efforts of Las Casas. It existed there before his time, but he, unhappily, gave to its growth a great and sudden impetus. Deeply impressed with the sufferings. of the Indians, who, reduced to substantial slavery by the Spaniards, were forced to a labor in the mine and field to which they were unaccustomed, the large-hearted but too enthusiastic churchman thought that he saw a solution of the difficulty. Bring in the negro, and the problem would be solved. He was docile, accustomed to labor, ignorant, brutal, and in every respect of a very different character from the gentle, half-civilized inhabitants of Mexico or Peru. He was also a heathen, and his residence among Christians would be of advantage to his soul. It was largely upon this recommendation, made in 1517, that the trade was expanded, and that negro slaves were sent into the colonies by thousands.* Las Casas lived long enough to repent of the advice which he had given, and it is greatly to the credit of the government of Spain that her officials used every effort to repair the wrong which had been innocently done. Even from the outset the Spanish law had thrown around the negro safeguards unknown among other nations. The slave had secured to him a part of every week, when his time was his own. He could insist upon his freedom when able to purchase it; he could own property in his *Helps, ii. 21, 22. own right; and the records of the Spanish colonies of the sixteenth century prove that many a negro, who went there as a slave, rose to the position of a free and successful planter.* Still, the law was ineffectual to protect the negro, however stringent were its regulations for his welfare. The slaves were abundant and cheap, and their lives of little value to an owner working an unhealthy mine or plantation where the profits of labor were enormous. In this condition of affairs, the home government adopted a policy apparently well calculated to check the growing evil. It determined to enhance the value of the slaves and thus make it to the interest of the master to preserve their health. Hence the governors of the colonies were instructed to prevent the importation of negroes, unless under a license from Spain, which was expensive and charily given, while a duty of thirty ducats on each slave still further increased his price.† *Helps. A very erroneous impression seems to prevail in regard to the conduct of the Spanish government, not only towards the negro, but towards the native population in America. In relation to the latter it has been justly remarked that "none of the European powers manifested so sincere a purpose to promote the welfare of a conquered people. The rulers of Spain were continually enacting laws, which erred only in being more just and wise than the country in its disordered condition was able to receive. They continually sought to protect the Indians by regulations extending to the minutest detail, and conceived in a spirit of thoughtful and even tender kindness."-Mackenzie's "America," title "South America," chap. iii. In all this work the Church of Rome did noble service. The difficulty was that the colonists, wild, reckless, and roaming over a boundless continent in search of gold, could not be restrained. It is to the individuals, and not to the government, that we should impute the crimes which disgrace our human nature. Froude, viii. p. 482. |