ay from Africa probably
a million and a half of negroes, of whom one-eighth never lived to see
the opposite shore.

In the same spirit England dealt with her colonies. When Virginia
imposed a tax on the import of negroes, the law had to give way before
the interest of the African Company. The same course was followed many
years later toward South Carolina, when an act of the provincial
Assembly laying a heavy duty on imported slaves was vetoed by the crown
(1761). Indeed, the title to a political tract published in 1745, _The
African Slave Trade, the Great Pillar and Support of the British
Plantation Trade in America_, appears fairly to express the prevalent
feeling of the mother-country on the subject before the War of
Independence. The most remarkable relaxation of the navigation laws in
the eighteenth century was the throwing open the slave trade by the act
"for extending and improving the trade to Africa," which, after reciting
that "the trade to and from Africa is very advantageous to Great
Britain, and necessary for the supplying the plantations and colonies
thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of negroes at reasonable
rates," enacted that it should be lawful "for all his majesty's subjects
to trade and traffick to and from any port or place in Africa, between
the port of Sallee in South Barbary and the Cape of Good Hope." By 1763
there were about three hundred thousand negroes in the North American
colonies.

It seemed at first as if the black man would gain by the Revolution. The
mulatto Attucks was one of the victims of the Boston Massacre, and was
buried with honor among the "martyrs of liberty." At the first call to
arms the negroes freely enlisted; but a meeting of the general officers
decided against their enlistment in the new army of 1775. The free
negroes were greatly dissatisfied. Lest they should transfer their
services to the British, Washington gave leave to enlist them, and it is
certain that they served throughout the war, shoulder to shoulder with
white men. At the battle of Monmouth there were more than seven hundred
black men in the field. Rhode Island formed a battalion of negroes,
giving liberty to every slave enlisting, with compensation to his owner;
and the battalion did good service. But Washington always considered the
policy of arming slaves "a moot point," unless the enemy set the
example; and though Congress recommended Georgia and South Carolina to
raise three thousand negro