THE ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY'S MONOPOLY 447 and James II had inclined to support the Company's claims, as a certain proportion of all prizes went into the royal exchequer, and the Company exercised its monopoly rights vigorously. Yet in spite of such discouragements interlopers continued their attacks, and with the first opportunity they asserted their claims. The moment came with the accession of William III when the Bill of Rights was interpreted as implying that all monopolies that had been granted through the exercise of the royal dispensing power were no longer of effect.1 This interpretation of the Bill was not accepted by the Royal African Company, but the contemporary attacks on the East India Company showed how far from secure those who held royal charters were. The Court of Assistants therefore attempted to get parliamentary sanction for its privileges,2 arguing that the Company had for years supported the trade, and that it would be compelled to give the trade up unless it were protected from being disturbed. In answer to this the "free traders" submitted that the West Indies would be benefited by a free and enlarged slave trade.3 From 1690 to 1697 the opposing arguments were at intervals presented to the Commons, who seemed unable to take decisive action. In 1694 they voted that forts and castles were necessary for the support of the trade, and that they could only be maintained by a joint-stock company, but no measure was passed to confirm the royal charter. In 1696 the Company again attempted to secure confirmation of its privileges, but again the "cheap slave” interest defeated it. Two years later the Company changed its tactics, as it realised that the demand of an open slave trade had become irresistible, and instead of continuing the hopeless attempt to get parliamentary confirmation of its monopoly from Barbary to the Cape of Good Hope, it offered to leave to the free traders all the coast except the Senegal and Gambia, if that region were confirmed to it. The offer aroused no enthusiastic gratitude in the hard hearts of the free traders, and caused a storm of opposition from the cloth manufacturers, who depended on the Gambia for the supply of dyewoods. The proposal, though it was rejected by the Commons, led to the passing of an Act' which provided that the whole African trade should be open to all His Majesty's subjects, the Company receiving 10 per cent. on all goods imported into Africa, to enable it to defend and maintain the forts for the protection of all traders. An additional duty varying from 5 to 10 per cent. was to be levied in the Gambia region on all exports from Africa except slaves. The Act was to last for thirteen years. From 1698 to 1713 the trade was carried on under its provisions, but from the first it worked badly. 1 Macpherson, D., Annals of Commerce, 11, 569. 1 C.J. x, 360, 31 March 1690. 3 Ibid. pp. 448-56. Ibid. x1, 68, 24 January 1694; 113-29, 2 March 1694. Petition of R. African Co. 13 January 1697-8 (P.R.Ô. T. 70/170). 6 C.J. XII, 133, 28 February 1697-8. 7 9 William III, c. 26. The Company complained that the sums it received from the duties were quite insufficient for the upkeep of the forts, and the free traders that trade derived no benefit from the Company. In the period of difficulty with the free traders the Royal African Company was not strong enough to oppose French attempts to trade in the Gambia and even James Fort was attacked and forced to capitulate in 1702,1 and the Company was unable to spare the money and arms to reconquer it and restore trade there. In this weak position the Company decided to treat with the French Company, and, as the Compagnie de Sénégal was in little better state than its rivals, a treaty for mutual assistance against disturbers of the trade was signed in 1705.2 It was an alliance of privileged Companies against the detested interlopers, and after its signature both Companies tried to restore their trade, but financial trouble continued to beset the English Company, and many of the forts and trading posts fell into a state of utter dilapidation, James Fort being abandoned in 1709.3 As the thirteen years of the Act of 1697 came to an end the separate traders renewed their efforts to secure the complete abolition of all restrictions. In support of their view they canvassed opinion in Parliament by means of petitions, and in the world at large through a torrent of pamphlets. On the side of the Company it was maintained that the competition of the open trade on the African coast had so greatly raised the purchase price of negroes there that instead of resulting in a lowered sale price in the West Indies, as had been hoped, the Act had had the reverse effect. On the other hand it was the planters, who might have been expected to understand their own interests, who petitioned most eagerly for an open trade in the hopes of more and cheaper negroes. The Company also declared that it performed a great national service by encouraging the woollen manufacture, but the manufacturers protested that their trade to Africa was cramped by the monopoly. Just when opinion in Parliament seemed to be so clearly in support of a free trade that the next action to be expected was a decisive pronouncement in its favour, the Company produced a new argument. In a petition to the Commons in 1710 it suggested that a strong joint-stock company would be necessary if England were to get the Spanish Asiento. No immediate action followed this petition, except the inevitable counter petition from free traders, but when the preliminaries of the Treaty of Utrecht were being negotiated, the views of the Company were allowed some consideration. By the grant of the Asiento in the Treaty of Utrecht England became the sole importer of slaves into Spanish America. The privileges of the Asiento were assigned by the Crown to the South Sea Company, whose history is dealt with elsewhere in this volume.5 The resulting 2 Labat, IV, 346. 1 Stone, ut cit. p. 185. 4 3 An answer to a scurrilous paper... (Brit. Mus. 8223, e. 4). C.J. XVI, 275, 24 January 1710. 5 Vide supra, chap. XI. THE ENGLISH PORTS AND THE SLAVE TRADE 449 difficulties with Spain did not greatly affect the progress of the English slave trade and hardly at all the English African holdings. As the South Sea Company had no trading places in Africa of its own it entered into a contract with the Royal African Company to supply it with the slaves it needed for importation into the Spanish colonies.1 The contract did not restore the fallen fortunes of the Company, and its position after 1713 was far from happy. The 10 per cent. duty had ended in that year, and as it was not renewed, the Company had to depend upon what profits it could make in the open market and by the Asiento. Such profits were quite insufficient for the upkeep of the forts. From this time, and possibly from 1697 onwards, the history of the Company ceased to be the history of the English slave trade, as the progressive elements in the trade were to be found in the groups of independent merchants, in the growing ports of Bristol, Liverpool, Plymouth as well as London, and in the colonies. The separate traders claimed, and were not convincingly answered by the Company, that before the 1697 Act came to an end they had beaten the Company in the trade and had secured the larger part of it themselves,2 to the advantage of the woollen manufacturers and of the West Indian planter. This open trade of the early eighteenth century, built up from a number of comparatively small groups, helped not only to develop the English ports, but also to establish English naval supremacy. The numbers of vigorous free-traders were increasing in London, and adding considerably to the volume of ocean-going craft from that port, but progress in Bristol and Liverpool was more striking. The mutually contradictory figures with which the disputants adorned their arguments in Parliament to show the vast extent of their shipping and the numbers of negroes carried by them cannot be accepted as a trustworthy guide to the progress they had made, but historians of both Bristol and Liverpool maintain that on this trade the fortunes of those ports were built in the eighteenth century. Bristol prospered so well in the slave trade that in 1713 her mayor declared it to be the "great support of our people", and Liverpool made such successful use of the open trade that it was said to have become by the second half of the eighteenth century "the principal slaving port not only in England, but in Europe". In this connection it may be noted that in 1772, Lord Mansfield, in his famous judgment on the case of the slave Somersett, pronounced that slavery was "so odious that nothing could be suffered to support it but positive law". Somersett thereby became a free man, and slavery was henceforward illegal on the soil of England. 1 Correspondence of the Royal African Company with the South Sea Company 1713-5 (P.R.O. T. 70/38). An account of the number of Negroes delivered in the (Brit. Mus. 8223, e. 4). Muir, Ramsay, A History of Liverpool, p. 192. CHBE I islands of Barbadoes, Jamaica and Antego 3 Hunt, W., Bristol, p. 214. See Howell, T., State Trials, xx, 82. 29 While accepting the principle of free trade in Africa Parliament retained a well-founded belief that the Royal African Company's forts were of great importance in defending the English claim to certain of the African slave trade areas, and therefore when the Company presented a petition in 1730 setting forth that, though the trade had been open, it had maintained the forts for seventeen years without assistance, and that it was in urgent need of relief from its "insupportable burden", the petition was followed by renewed examinations in Parliament of the conditions of the slave trade. Resolutions on the matter were agreed to, in which the Commons declared their opinion that the forts were necessary for the promotion of the trade and that an allowance from the national Exchequer should be made towards their upkeep.1 From 1730 this policy was continued, and the Company received annual grants of £10,000 till 1747, when no grant was made, and the Company had once more to become self-supporting. The impossibility of keeping up the forts without assistance provoked another petition to the Commons, and the Board of Trade was instructed to collect information and report to Parliament its conclusions. In 1749 the Board, well-informed and able as it was, reported itself unable to come to a conclusion from the evidence submitted to it as to the best means of carrying on the trade. It therefore presented to the Commons a number of papers which summed up the chief conflicting views. In choosing between the rival nostrums for the restoration of vigour to the slave trade Parliament finally declared in favour of a compromise embodied in an Act of 1750.2 This solution departed from the wishes of those who opposed all Company rule by providing for the erection of a new Company to which the management of the forts was to be entrusted, and departed from the desires of the jointstock Company supporters by forbidding the new Company to hold any joint stock or to undertake any trading in its corporate capacity. A project for the assumption of direct control by the Government was not favoured, probably because the work of supervising the forts would be too heavy a burden on it.3 The Act provided that the forts and other possessions held by the Royal African Company on the West African Coast should be vested in a regulated company, the "Company of Merchants trading to Africa". Admission to the new Company was to be open to all His Majesty's subjects on payment of a fee of forty shillings, and the government was to be in the hands of a Committee of nine annually elected, chosen by the freemen of the Company in the three ports principally concerned with the slave trade, Liverpool, Bristol and London. This Committee was made responsible for the management 2 23 George II, c. 31. 1 C.J., XXI, 522. Martin, E. C., The British West African Settlements 1750-1821, p. 27. COMPANY OF MERCHANTS TRADING TO AFRICA 451 and upkeep of the forts. It was to appoint all necessary servants and officers for the service, and to make annual returns to Parliament of its expenditure. Nothing was said in the Act as to the source of the income from which the Company was to defray its necessary expenses, though provision was made as to the way in which it was to be accounted for. For supervision of the work of maintaining the forts it was provided that the captains of the vessels of the Royal Navy on the African coast should report to the Admiralty on the state and condition of the forts. As the Company of Merchants trading to Africa was incorporated to prevent the evils of a close trading corporation, careful provision was made that the Committee should not become an exclusive autocratic body, and in addition to the rule of annual election it was provided that no member of the Committee might be elected for more than three successive years. This regulated company was not in its corporate capacity a trading company, but an organ of local government in West Africa. The slave trade, after the Committee of the Company entered fully upon its powers, was left entirely free and open to all His Majesty's subjects, and the new Company was stringently debarred from exercising any restrictive authority whatever over traders on the coast. Those who engaged in the slave trade were therefore free to pursue it as they chose, and entitled to the protection of the forts, which were to be maintained out of an annual parliamentary vote. The Committee appointed to undertake the management of the forts was representative of all the traders who chose to pay the small admission fee and thus the victory of the separate traders was complete. "Free Trade to Africa by Act of Parliament" was the motto on the Company's seal, and under this motto the slave trade was carried on until its abolition in 1807. 1 An Act passed in 1752 "for making compensation and satisfaction to the Royal African Company for their charter, lands, forts"," provides an opportunity for surveying the extent to which the English slave trade had added to the English possessions. It included a list of the forts which were handed over to the 1750 Company, namely one fort on the Gambia and seven on the Guinea Coast, thus affording evidence of the decline in the Company's power from the days of its brief prosperity in the seventeenth century. By 1750 the slave trade had fallen into the hands of small groups of independent traders, and the government of the British West African holdings was passing from the Company control of the seventeenth century towards the direct assumption of authority by the Crown which was to come in the nineteenth. Though the coasts had been frequented by British vessels from the fifteenth century, not much addition to the knowledge of the interior of Africa had been gained by the middle of the eighteenth. The slave 1 25 George II, c. 4. |