Strict laws were made for the good treatment of the slaves on the plantations.  The trade was carried on under license from the Government, and an import duty of thirty ducats per head was charged on every negro that was landed.  I call it an experiment.  The full consequences could not be foreseen; and I cannot see that as an experiment it merits the censures which in its later developments it eventually came to deserve.  Las Casas, who approved of it, was one of the most excellent of men.  Our own Bishop Butler could give no decided opinion against negro slavery as it existed in his time.  It is absurd to say that ordinary merchants and ship captains ought to have seen the infamy of a practice which Las Casas advised and Butler could not condemn.  The Spanish and Portuguese Governments claimed, as I said, the control of the traffic.  The Spanish settlers in the West Indies objected to a restriction which raised the price and shortened the supply.  They considered that having established themselves in a new country they had a right to a voice in the conditions of their occupancy.  It was thus that the Spaniards in the Canaries represented the matter to John Hawkins.  They told him that if he liked to make the venture with a contraband cargo from Guinea, their countrymen would give him an enthusiastic welcome.  It is evident from the story that neither he nor they expected that serious offence would be taken at Madrid.  Hawkins at this time was entirely friendly with the Spaniards.  It was enough if he could be assured that the colonists would be glad to deal with him.

I am not crediting him with the benevolent purposes of Las Casas.  I do not suppose Hawkins thought much of saving black men’s souls.  He saw only an opportunity of extending his business among a people with whom he was already largely connected.  The traffic was established.  It had the sanction of the Church, and no objection had been raised to it anywhere on the score of morality.  The only question which could have presented itself to Hawkins was of the right of the Spanish Government to prevent foreigners from getting a share of a lucrative trade against the wishes of its subjects.  And his friends at the Canaries certainly did not lead him to expect any real opposition.  One regrets that a famous Englishman should have been connected with the slave trade; but we have no right to heap violent censures upon him because he was no more enlightened than the wisest of his contemporaries.

Thus, encouraged from Santa Cruz, Hawkins on his return to England formed an African company out of the leading citizens of London.  Three vessels were fitted out, Hawkins being commander and part owner.  The size of them is remarkable:  the Solomon, as the largest was called, 120 tons; the Swallow, 100 tons; the Jonas not above 40 tons.  This represents them as inconceivably small.  They carried between them a hundred men, and ample room had to be provided besides for the blacks.