tons burthen [according to the custom-house measurement] which had the space of five feet between the decks, and three men to two tons in every vessel beyond one hundred and fifty tons which had equal accommodation in point of height between the decks."
In the House of Lords, in spite of increased opposition, the bill was amended to compel the carrying of regularly educated surgeons on every slaver and to give bounties to slaver captains who lost no more than two per centum of the slaves during the Middle Passage. Finally, on Thursday, July 10, 1788, "the first bill that ever put fetters upon that barbarous and destructive monster, The Slave-trade," was sent to the King. And on the next day the King signed it and it became the law of the realm.
The Parliamentary investigation of the trade followed, and this gave the public a full knowledge of its horrors. As already said, these horrors grew up only because of the blind greed of the slavers, They might perhaps, by giving the slaves good passenger accommodations, have long delayed the fate that was at hand. But blind they were. On April 27, 1792, Parliament passed a resolution by a vote of one hundred and fifty-one to one hundred and thirty-two for the abolition of the trade in 1796. In the House of Lords it failed.
In 1793 the abolitionists failed in the Commons as well as the House of Lords. In 1794 the measure was carried in the Commons but lost in the upper house. Then an effort was made to keep British ships from supplying foreigners, and that failed. A supreme effort seems to have been made in 1799, but that failed also, and thereafter nothing of importance was done in
