the treaty with Russia, which had been allowed to expire in 1786, was also then renewed.
Slave trade, Among numerous other matters, the slave-trade occupied a very considerable portion of the attention of Parliament and of the country during this period. By a return laid before Parliament in 1789, the number of slaves annually carried from the coast of Africa in British vessels was thirty-eight thousand; the number taken to the British West Indies, upon an average of four years, being estimated at twenty-two thousand five hundred.[1] Prior to the year 1760 no complete returns have been preserved of the number of ships thus employed; subsequently, however, it ranged from twenty-eight, measuring three thousand four hundred and seventy-five tons in the year 1761, to one hundred and ninety-two, measuring twenty thousand two hundred and ninety-six tons in 1776; but, during the war, from 1776 to 1783, this inhuman trade either languished, or the vessels formerly engaged in it were otherwise more profitably employed.[2] The majority of the slave-vessels were*
- ↑ Of one hundred and thirty-seven vessels thus engaged in the year 1787, eighty were owned in Liverpool, and thirty in Bristol.
- ↑ Macpherson (iv. 145) gives the following dimensions of a "slaver," from a return presented to Parliament in 1786. Taking the first on the list, a ship belonging to J. Brooks and Co., it appears that the length of the lower deck, with the thickness of the grating and the bulkhead, was 100 feet; her breadth of beam, from inside to inside, 25 ft. 4 in.; the depth of the hold, from ceiling to lower deck, 10 ft.; height between decks, 5 ft. 8 in.; length of the men's room on lower deck, 96 ft. 4 in.; breadth of the men's room on lower deck, 25 ft. 4 in.; length of the platform in men's room on the lower deck, 46 ft.; breadth of the same platform, 6 ft.; length of the boys' room, 13 ft. 9 in.; breadth of the boys' room, 25 ft.; length of platform in boys' room, 6 ft.; length of the women's room, 28 ft. 6 in.; breadth of women's room, 23 ft. 6 in.; length of platform in women's room, 28 ft. 6 in.; breadth of platform in women's room on each side, 6 ft. The number of air-ports going-through the side of the deck was 14; the length of the quarter-deck,
