ness of the family.

BRITISH SUPPORT OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

Southern opinion had not always been of this type. It had changed
with the increase in the number of slaves, and with the increased
profit from their labor. Before the Revolutionary war, Virginia
had earnestly petitioned George III. to prohibit the importation
of slaves from Africa, and the answer of His Majesty was a peremptory
instruction to the Royal Governor at Williamsburg, "not to assent
to any law of the Colonial Legislature by which the importation of
slaves should in any respect be prohibited or obstructed." Anti-
slavery opinion was developed in a far greater degree in the American
Colonies than in the mother country. When the Convention of 1787
inserted in the Federal Constitution a clause giving to Congress
the power to abolish the slave-trade after the year 1808, they took
a step far in advance of European opinion. A society was formed
in London, in the year 1787, for the suppression of the slave-trade.
Although it was organized under the auspices of the distinguished
philanthropists, William Clarkson and Granville Sharp, it had at
the time as little influence upon the popular opinion of England
as the early efforts of William Lloyd Garrison and the Society for
the Abolition of Domestic Slavery had upon the public opinion of
the United States. It was not until 1791 that Mr. Wilberforce
introduced in Parliament his first bill for the suppression of the
slave-trade, and though he had the enlightened sympathy of Mr.
Pitt, the eminent premier did not dare to make it a ministerial
measure. The bill was rejected by a large vote. It was not until
fifteen years later that the conscience of England won a victory
over the organized capital engaged in the infamous traffic. It
was the young and struggling Republic in America that led the way,
and she led the way under the counsel and direction of Southern
statesmen. American slave-holders were urging the abolition of
the traffic while London merchants were using every effort to
continue it, and while Bristol, the very headquarters of the trade,
was represented in Parliament by Edmund Burke. Even among the
literary men of England,--if Boswell's gossip may be trusted,--Dr.
Johnson was peculiar in his hatred of the infamy--a hatred which
is obsequious biographer mollifies to an "unfavorable notion," and
officiously ascribes to "prejudice and imperfect or false in