begins a series of
acts extending down to the Revolution, which, so far as their contents
can be ascertained, seem to have been designed effectually to check the
slave-trade. Some of these acts, like those of 1723 and 1727, were
almost immediately disallowed.[26] The Act of 1732 laid a duty of 5%,
which was continued until 1769,[27] and all other duties were in
addition to this; so that by such cumulative duties the rate on slaves
reached 25% in 1755,[28] and 35% at the time of Braddock's
expedition.[29] These acts were found "very burthensome," "introductive
of many frauds," and "very inconvenient,"[30] and were so far repealed
that by 1761 the duty was only 15%. As now the Burgesses became more
powerful, two or more bills proposing restrictive duties were passed,
but disallowed.[31] By 1772 the anti-slave-trade feeling had become
considerably developed, and the Burgesses petitioned the king, declaring
that "The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of
Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and
under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear _will
endanger the very existence_ of your Majesty's American dominions....
Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your
Majesty to remove _all those restraints_ on your Majesty's governors of
this colony, _which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check
so very pernicious a commerce_."[32]

Nothing further appears to have been done before the war. When, in 1776,
the delegates adopted a Frame of Government, it was charged in this
document that the king had perverted his high office into a "detestable
and insupportable tyranny, by ... prompting our negroes to rise in arms
among us, those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he
hath refused us permission to exclude by law."[33] Two years later, in
1778, an "Act to prevent the further importation of Slaves" stopped
definitively the legal slave-trade to Virginia.[34]

8. ~Restrictions in Maryland.~[35] Not until the impulse of the Assiento
had been felt in America, did Maryland make any attempt to restrain a
trade from which she had long enjoyed a comfortable revenue. The Act of
1717, laying a duty of 40_s._,[36] may have been a mild restrictive
measure. The duties were slowly increased to 50_s._ in 1754,[37] and L4.
in 1763.[38] In 1771 a prohibitive duty of L9 was laid;[39] and in 1783,
after the war, all importation by se