of tobacco,
rice, and indigo, the negro toiler supplied the needed element for great
profits. The church's part in the business was mainly to find excuse;
through slavery the heathen were being made Christians. But when they
had become Christians the church forgot to bid that they be made
brothers and freemen. Some real mitigation of their lot no doubt there
was, through teaching of religion and from other conditions. Professor
Du Bois says that slavery brought the African three advantages: it
taught him to labor, gave him the English language and--after a
sort--the Christian religion. But it ruined such family life as had
existed under a kind of regulated polygamy. Again we must decline to
measure the good and the evil of the system. Probably the negro was in
better condition in America than he had been in Africa, as he certainly
was in far worse condition than he was entitled to be--and was in future
to be.

The traffic was maintained chiefly by trading companies in England,--at
first a great monopoly headed by the Duke of York, then rival companies.
The colonists made some attempts to check the traffic,--growing alarmed
at the great infusion of a servile and barbaric population. Virginia
long tried to discourage it by putting a heavy import tax on slaves,
which was constantly overruled by the English government under the
influence of the trading companies. At a later day every one tried to
put the responsibility of slavery on some one else,--the North on the
South, the South on England. But in truth the responsibility was on all.
The colonists did not hesitate to refuse to receive tea which England
taxed; equally well they could have refused to buy slaves imported by
trading companies if they had not wanted them; but they did want them.
The commercial demand overrode humanity. The social conscience was not
awake,--strange as its slumber now seems. Stranger still, as we shall
see, after it had once been thoroughly roused, it was deliberately
drugged to sleep. But this belongs to a later chapter.

New England had little use for slaves at home, but for slave ships she
had abundant use. With a sterile soil, and with the sea at her doors
swarming with edible fish and beckoning to her sails, her hardy industry
found its best field on the ocean. The fisheries were the foundation of
her commerce. The thrifty Yankee sold the best of his catch in Europe
(here again we follow Weeden); the medium quality he ate himself; and
t