The Massachusetts Slave Trade.

and allowed to be free and open for all subjects of this Kingdom."¹ In 1698 Parliament put an end to the privileges that had had no legal existence since the Declaration of Rights ten years earlier, and opened the trade to private competition. It was rapidly absorbed by the colonies. The increasing preference shown for slave labor in the South and the West Indies, together with the growing demand in Europe for sugar and tobacco, soon gave a new impulse to this "detestable traffic."
Dr. Belknap said that the rum distilled in Boston was "the main-spring of this traffick."² The development of this industry indicates to some extent the activity of the state in the slave trade. Massachusetts was the pioneer in the distilling business. A distillery is mentioned in Boston in 1714; eight are given on an early map known as Price's plan 1733).³ One in Boston owned by a Mr. Childs (1735) was perhaps the most commodious and best-arranged of that day, and was the model for many others.⁴ The industry soon extended to the country towns in the vicinity of Boston.⁵ Its importance is apparent in the controversy before the Board of Trade in 1750, in regard to the duties on sugar and molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies. The agent sent to Massachusetts is of the, opinion that a duty of one penny per gallon on molasses is the maximum that the trade will bear. He states that there were sixty-three distilleries in Massachusetts, which converted 15,000 hogsheads of molasses into rum every year.⁶ Not all of this rum was consumed in the African trade, but the demand there was immense. A large amount was carried to the coast of Guinea, where it was "imploy'd in the purchase of Gold to pay the balance of their trade to England, and of Slaves to be carried to the West Indies, for the procuring of Sugars or Bills of exchange for the same purpose."⁷ There was nothing which could take the place of rum in this part of New England's commerce. Captain George Scott, of Newport, who went to the Gold Coast in 1740 with an experimental cargo of other articles, wrote back pathetically that he had "repented a hundred times y^e bying of them dry goods."⁸ In regard to the state of this industry in 1760 we have Edmund Burke's testimony:⁹ "The quantity of spirits, which they distil in Boston from the molasses they bring in from all parts of the West Indies, is as surprising as the cheap rate at which they vend it, which is under 2s. a gallon. With this they supply almost all the consumption of our colonies in North America, the Indian trade there, the vast demands of their own and the Newfoundland fishery, and in great measure those of the African trade; but they are more famous for the quantity and cheapness, than for the excellency of their rum." The natives of Guinea fortunately were not connoisseurs and the ship captains were even able to "worter" their rum without exciting suspicion.¹⁰
It was during the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century that the slave trade was at its height. The Boston trade, though inferior to that of Newport and Bristol, was of greater importance than it had been in any previous time. New England ships laden with rum, firearms and trinkets went to Guinea, exchanged their cargo for negroes, carried the negroes to the southern colonies or the West Indies, getting in return for them tobacco, sugar and molasses. The tobacco was shipped to England; the molasses was carried home to be turned into rum, a large part of which soon found its way to Africa in a repetition of the "vicious circle."

¹ Am. Hist. Rec., I, 24.
² I. Mass. Hist. Coll., IV, 197.
³ Mem. Hist. of Boston, II, 447. For Price's plan see Ibid., II, liv.
⁴ Am. Hist. Rec., I, 316.
⁵ Weeden, II, 502.
⁶ Mass. Arch., LXIV, 379
⁷ Mass. Arch., LXIV, 380.
⁸ Am. Hist. Rec., I, 317.
⁹ Burke, European Settiements in America, p. 174.
¹⁰ Weeden, II, 465.

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