- tlements, and imported also a huge cargo of negroes
to Virginia for tobacco planting, and this was the beginning of slavery in America.
This hunting of human beings to make them slaves was more barbarous than anything the negroes themselves could have imagined. These wretched black men, having been captured, their huts destroyed and whole villages burnt, were placed on ships which brought them to our colonies, to the West Indies and Jamaica; so packed and overloaded were these ships and the poor negroes were so ill-treated that many died on the way; out of a hundred only fifty would be any good for work. This was one of the prices paid for what is called expansion and having colonies. When the English came to know the real nature of this dreadful business, all the best opinion was against it; but the Quakers were the first to take any practical action against the slave trade, which they did as early as the seventeenth century, both in America and England, by turning out of their society all who should be engaged in it. Gradually the British did away with slavery in their colonies, and it was finally abolished in 1833, when Lord Grey was Prime Minister; but the honor of being the first to abolish it lies not with England but with Denmark, who forbade it in its possessions at the end of the eighteenth century. Several countries followed the example of England after she had put down slavery so far as it concerned herself, but the United States was the last to fall in.
