Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/581

TO AMERICA. 457 least, and that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem I6d6 themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. Prepare a Bdl for the Assembly of our colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for this purpose. No Virginia Legislature seconded such malice, and in December, 1689, the exiles were pardoned. Tyranny and injustice peopled America with men coioniaaUoo nurtured in suffering and adversity. The history of our colonisa- *°^ ctio^^ tion is the history of the crimes of Europe. "Thus did Jeffries contribute to people the New World. On another occasion he exerted an opposite influence. Kidnapping Kidnapping. had become common in Bristol, and not felons only, but young persons and others, were hurried across the Atlantic and sold for money. At Bristol, the Mayor and Justices would intimidate small rogues and pilferers, who, under the terror of being hanged, prayed for transportation as the only avenue to safety, and were then divided among the members of the Court. The trade was The trade exceedingly profitable — far more so than the slave trade — and had ** Bristol, been conducted for years. By accident, it came to the knowledge of Jeffries, who delighted in a fair opportunity to rant. Finding that the Aldermen, Justices, and the Mayor himself were concerned in this kidnapping, he turned to the Mayor, who was sitting on the Bench, bravely arrayed in scarlet and furs, and gave him every ill name which scolding eloquence could devise. Nor would he desist till he made the scarlet chief magistrate of the city go down Handy to the criminars post at the bar, and plead for himself as a common <*»ndy. rogue would have done. The prosecutions depended till the revo- lution, which made 'an amnesty; and the judicial kidnappers, retaining their gains, suffered nothing beyond disgrace and terror." — ^Bancroft's History of the United States, c. xiv ; The Colonies on the Chesapeake Bay. The scene between Jeffries and the Mayor of Bristol is described in North's Life of the Lord Keeper Guildford, vol. ii, p. 24, as follows : — "There had been an usage among the Aldermen and Justices of that city [Bristol] — where all persons, even common shopkeepers, more or less, trade to the American plantations — to carry over The Mayor criminals who were pardoned with condition of transportation, and «»dhi8men. to sell them for money. This was found to be a good trade, but not being content to take such felons as were convicted at their assizes and sessions, which produced but a few, they found out a shorter way, which yielded a greater plenty of the commodity. And that was this : The Mayor and Justices, or some of them, usually met at their tolsey (a Court-house by their Exchequer) about noon, which was the meeting of the merchants, as at the Exchange at London ; and there they sat and did justice — business Digitized by Google