slave merchants.” In Virginia slavery built up a landed aristocracy who loved “the institution.” But such was the spirit of popular liberty that it demands of the legislature to suppress the importation of slaves. The legislature yielding to some extent to the voice of its constituency levies a tax on each negro imported, but the Governor soon announces that “the interfering interests of the African company has obtained a repeal of that law.” Whereupon a statesman of Virginia, despairing of success, declares that “the British government of Virginia constantly checks the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to the infernal traffic.” In Georgia from the very first the colonists prohibited the introduction of slaves by law. James Oglethorpe writes, “my friends and I settled the colony of Georgia, and by charter were established trustees. We determined not to suffer slavery there; but the slave merchants and their adherents not only occasioned us much trouble, but at last got the government to sanction them.” In New York the Dutch offered to furnish slaves to the colonists, but the rigor of the climate more than the humanity of the people, prevented the rapid growth of slavery there. But notwithstanding the obstacles which the climate interposed, the governor is instructed by royal authority to encourage the importation of negroes. In 1712 Pennsylvania circulates a general petition for the gradual emancipation of slaves by law. In the New England States laws were framed prohibiting the holding of negroes as slaves. Every man owning slaves was required after ten years to emancipate them; and every one failing to comply with this regulation was fined twice the value of each slave thus held. Although this law was not strictly enforced, still it shows the feeling of the colony relative to slavery. Even South Carolina, where slavery is coeval with the settlement on Ashley River, and where it was found to be “very profitable,” complains in 1727 of “the vast importation of slaves,” and
