TRANSPORTATION TO AMERICA. 17 of a later period, the same authority says : — Most of the colonists were no better than criminals; indeed, the colony had got so evil a name in England that few respect- able men would go out." De Foe, whose pictures of con- De Foe. temporary life are none the less reliable because they were used for the purposes of fiction, has left some remarkably graphic sketches of the transportation system, of the traffic in indented servants, and of the kidnapping practices to which it gave rise.* Not only were the gaols cleared from time to time by the removal of their inmates to the ships employed in carrying them over to the plantations, but the very streets of London and other large cities were swept by kidnappers in search of their prey. The method of dealing with the convicts and indented servants, who were shipped to the plantations in the West Indies as well as to those weat indies. in America, is described by a historian of Jamaica, whose work was written and published at a time when informa- tion on the subject might be readily gathered from men's mouths, instead of being laboriously compiled from dusty records.* The author, seeking to justify the planters from the charge of cruelty to their slaves so often alleged against them, asserts that the cruelty was not practised by the planters but by their overseers, who were sent out to the plantations from England. The colonists were thus made to suffer in reputation for the vicious brutality of men thrust upon them by the English Government; and incidentally he remarks — " America has been made the very common sewer and dungyard to Britain. Similar language seems to have been frequently applied to the West Indies.t coionwation Perhaps the truth could hardly be better expressed than it is by Bancroft : — " The history of our colonisation is the history of the crimes of Europe." •Port, pp. 458-9, 460. + " Yet there are autbora who affect to deBcribe the inhahitftnts of all the West Indies as a herd of criminals and convicts. "-^Edwards, History of the West Indies, vol. ii, p. 7. It was the fashion among English writers of the eighteenth century, when alludinff to colonists generally, to describe them in the manner complained of by Edwards. B Digitized by Google
