George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[412] quarter of a million purchased in Africa, and thrown

Chap. XXIV}

into the Atlantic on the passage. The gross returns to English merchants, for the whole traffic in that number of slaves, may have been not far from four hundred millions of dollars. Yet, as at least one half of the negroes exported from Africa to America were carried in English ships, it should be observed that this estimate is by far the lowest ever made by any inquirer into the statistics of human wickedness. After every deduction, the trade retains its gigantic character of crime.

In an age when the interests of trade guided legislation, this branch of commerce possessed paramount attractions. Not a statesman exposed its enormities; and, if Richard Baxter echoed the opinions of Puritan Massachusetts; if Southern drew tears by the tragic tale of Oronooko; if Steele awakened a throb of indignation by the story of Inkle and Yarico; if Savage and Shenstone pointed their feeble couplets with the wrongs of ‘Afric's sable children;’ if the Irish metaphysician Hutcheson, struggling for a higher system of morals, justly stigmatized the traffic; yet no public opinion lifted its voice against it. English ships, fitted out in English cities, under the special favor of the royal family, of the ministry, and of parliament, stole from Africa, in the years from 1700 to 1750, probably a million and a half of souls, of whom one eighth were buried in the Atlantic, victims of the passage; and yet in England no general indignation rebuked the enormity; for the public opinion of the age was obedient to materialism. Wars had been for the balance of power, as though the safeguards of nations lay in force alone. Protestantism itself had, in the political point of view, been the triumph of materialism over the spiritual authority of the church. The same