particular to the royal African company of England."[15] Duties laid on the importer, and all acts in any way restricting the trade, were frowned upon and very often disallowed.  “Whereas,” ran Governor Dobbs’s instructions, “Acts have been passed in some of our Plantations in America for laying duties on the importation and exportation of Negroes to the great discouragement of the Merchants trading thither from the coast of Africa....  It is our Will and Pleasure that you do not give your assent to or pass any Law imposing duties upon Negroes imported into our Province of North Carolina."[16]

The exact proportions of the slave-trade to America can be but approximately determined.  From 1680 to 1688 the African Company sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped there 60,783 Negro slaves, and after losing 14,387 on the middle passage, delivered 46,396 in America.  The trade increased early in the eighteenth century, 104 ships clearing for Africa in 1701; it then dwindled until the signing of the Assiento, standing at 74 clearances in 1724.  The final dissolution of the monopoly in 1750 led—­excepting in the years 1754-57, when the closing of Spanish marts sensibly affected the trade—­to an extraordinary development, 192 clearances being made in 1771.  The Revolutionary War nearly stopped the traffic; but by 1786 the clearances had risen again to 146.

To these figures must be added the unregistered trade of Americans and foreigners.  It is probable that about 25,000 slaves were brought to America each year between 1698 and 1707.  The importation then dwindled, but rose after the Assiento to perhaps 30,000.  The proportion, too, of these slaves carried to the continent now began to increase.  Of about 20,000 whom the English annually imported from 1733 to 1766, South Carolina alone received some 3,000.  Before the Revolution, the total exportation to America is variously estimated as between 40,000 and 100,000 each year.  Bancroft places the total slave population of the continental colonies at 59,000 in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 293,000 in 1754.  The census of 1790 showed 697,897 slaves in the United States.[17]

In colonies like those in the West Indies and in South Carolina and Georgia, the rapid importation into America of a multitude of savages gave rise to a system of slavery far different from that which the late Civil War abolished.  The strikingly harsh and even inhuman slave codes in these colonies show this.  Crucifixion, burning, and starvation were legal modes of punishment.[18] The rough and brutal character of the time and place was partly responsible for this, but a more decisive reason lay in the fierce and turbulent character of the imported Negroes.  The docility to which long years of bondage and strict discipline gave rise was absent, and insurrections and acts of violence were of frequent occurrence.[19] Again and again the danger of planters being “cut off by their own negroes"[20] is mentioned, both in the islands and on the continent.  This condition of vague dread and unrest not only increased the severity of laws and strengthened the police system, but was the prime motive back of all the earlier efforts to check the further importation of slaves.