mishing sailors; that white servitude[134] was common,
and many whites were convicts[135] from England; and the extraordinary
demand for laborers may have deadened the moral sensibilities of the
colonists as to the enormity of the great crime to which they were
parties. Women were sold for wives,[136] and sometimes were
kidnapped[137] in England and sent into the colony. There was nothing
in the moral atmosphere of the colony inimical to the spirit of
bondage that was manifest so early in the history of this people.
England had always held her sceptre over slaves of some character:
villeins in the feudal era, stolen Africans under Elizabeth and under
the house of the Tudors; Caucasian children--whose German blood could
be traced beyond the battle of Hastings--in her mines, factories, and
mills; and vanquished Brahmans in her Eastern possessions. How, then,
could we expect less of these "knights" and "adventurers" who
"degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged
classes"?[138]

The institution of slavery once founded, it is rather remarkable that
its growth was so slow. According to the census of Feb. 16, 1624,
there were but twenty-two in the entire colony.[139] There were eleven
at Flourdieu Hundred, three in James City, one on James Island, one on
the plantation opposite James City, four at Warisquoyak, and two at
Elizabeth City. In 1648 the population of Virginia was about fifteen
thousand, with a slave population of three hundred.[140] The cause of
the slow increase of slaves was not due to any colonial prohibition.
The men who were engaged in tearing unoffending Africans from their
native home were some time learning that this colony was at this time
a ready market for their helpless victims. Whatever feeling or
scruple, if such ever existed, the colonists had in reference to the
subject of dealing in the slave-trade, was destroyed at conception by
the golden hopes of large gains. The latitude, the products of the
soil, the demand for labor, the custom of the indenture of white
servants, were abundant reasons why the Negro should be doomed to
bondage for life.

The subjects of slavery were the poor unfortunates that the strong
push to the outer edge of organized African society, where, through
neglect or abuse, they are consigned to the mercy of avarice and
malice. We have already stated that the weaker tribes of Africa are
pushed into the alluvial flats of that continent; where they have