By the Statute 23 George II., chapter 31, the old company was dissolved
and a new "Company of Merchants trading to Africa" erected in its
stead.[11] Any merchant so desiring was allowed to engage in the trade
on payment of certain small duties, and such merchants formed a company
headed by nine directors. This marked the total abolition of monopoly in
the slave-trade, and was the form under which the trade was carried on
until after the American Revolution.

That the slave-trade was the very life of the colonies had, by 1700,
become an almost unquestioned axiom in British practical economics. The
colonists themselves declared slaves "the strength and sinews of this
western world,"[12] and the lack of them "the grand obstruction"[13]
here, as the settlements "cannot subsist without supplies of them."[14]
Thus, with merchants clamoring at home and planters abroad, it easily
became the settled policy of England to encourage the slave-trade. Then,
too, she readily argued that what was an economic necessity in Jamaica
and the Barbadoes could scarcely be disadvantageous to Carolina,
Virginia, or even New York. Consequently, the colonial governors were
generally instructed to "give all due encouragement and invitation to
merchants and others, ... and in particular to the royal African company
of England."[15] Duties laid on the importer, and all acts in any way
restricting the trade, were frowned upon and very often disallowed.
"Whereas," ran Governor Dobbs's instructions, "Acts have been passed in
some of our Plantations in America for laying duties on the importation
and exportation of Negroes to the great discouragement of the Merchants
trading thither from the coast of Africa.... It is our Will and Pleasure
that you do not give your assent to or pass any Law imposing duties upon
Negroes imported into our Province of North Carolina."[16]