in the House of Lords. This illusion of gold finally fell upon the
throne itself, and King William and Queen Mary lent the traffic royal
patronage. At the very time when men in Boston, exultant over the
success of their experiment in democracy, were writing home to London
about this ideal republic of God that had been set up at Plymouth, and
the orb of liberty began to flame with light and hope for New England,
this other orb began to fling out its rays of sorrow, disease and death
across Africa and the southern sands.

At length, in 1713, Queen Anne, in the Treaty of Utrecht, after a long
and arduous series of diplomatic negotiations, secured for the English
throne a monopoly of the slave traffic, and the writers of the time
spoke of this treaty as an event that would make the queen's name to be
eulogized as long as time should last. But two hundred years have
reversed the judgment of the civilized world. History now recalls Queen
Anne's monopoly of the slave traffic as it recalls the Black Death in
England, the era of smallpox in Scotland,--for one such treaty is
probably equal to two bubonic plagues, or three epidemics of cholera and
yellow fever.

Finally, an informal agreement was entered upon between the English
slave dealers, the Spaniards and Portuguese,--an agreement that was
literally a "covenant with death and a compact with hell." The
Portuguese became the explorers of the interior, the advance agents of
the traffic, who reported what tribes had the tallest, strongest men,
and the most comely women. The Spaniards maintained the slave stations
on the coast, and took over from the Portuguese the gangs of slaves who
were chained together and driven down to the coast; the English slave
dealers owned the ships, bought the slaves at wholesale, transported the
wretches across the sea, and retailed the poor creatures to the planters