than the whites. During the regal government, we had at one time obtained a law, which imposed such a duty on the importation of slaves as amounted nearly to a prohibition, when one inconsiderate assembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstance, repealed the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then sovereign, and no devices, no expedients which could ever after be attempted by subsequent assemblies, and they seldom met without attempting them, could succeed in getting the royal assent to a renewal of the duty. In the very first session held under the Republican Government, the assembly passed a law for the perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves. This will, in some measure, stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature.[1]
QUERY IX.
THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE MILITIA AND REGULAR TROOPS, AND THEIR PAY?
The following is a state of the militia, taken from returns of
1780 and 1781, except in those counties marked with an
asterisk, the returns from which are somewhat older.
- ↑ The first settlement of Europeans in America was by the Spaniards in St. Domingo in 1493. So early as 1501 we find they had already got into the habit of carrying the negroes there as slaves, and in 1503 they had become so inconvenient, that Ovando, the Governor, put a stop to their importation. Herrera. Dec. 1, B. 2, ch. 10; B. 4. ch. 12; B. 5, ch. 12; but in 1511 they were again fully in the same habit. The king's instructions at that date were “Que se buscasse forma como se llevassen muchos negros de Guinea, porque era mas util el trabajo de un negro, que de quatro Indios.”—Herrera. Dec. 1, L. 9, c. 5; Dec. 2, L. 2, c. 8, 20.
