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States and of the Department. Another clerk had charge of the petitions for pardons and remissions of sentence and passports and correspondence relative thereto, and kept a daily register of all letters received other than Diplomatic; of their disposition, and of the action of the Department thereon. To make the proper entries in this register each bureau, except the Diplomatic, was required to send to the Home Bureau the purport of all answers to letters as soon as prepared, or if no answer was to be given, must state the disposition made of the letter. The register was to be submitted daily to the Secretary. Another clerk was to file and preserve the returns of copyrights and register the copyrighted books, and prepare the letters relating thereto; also to record reports to the President and two Houses of Congress and assist in recording and copying generally. What had been the Bureau of Archives, Laws and Commissions was abolished and the office of the Keeper of the Archives took its place, with one clerk who was to have charge of the Archives of the Department, other than Diplomatic and Consular, and their arrangement and the correspondence relative thereto. He also had in his care the rolls of the laws and their recording, publication, and distribution and the distribution of public documents.

The Translator and Librarian was to make the translations and perform the duties of Librarian. Instead of the Disbursing and Superintending Bureau was substituted the Disbursing Agent who was to have charge of all the disbursements and purchases, under the control of the President and Secretary of State.36

The work of the Department was thus elaborately subdivided. It remains to follow the changes and developments of the divisions. GAILLARD HUNT.

[The next section will be devoted to a further consideration of the Subdivisions of the Department.]

36 1 Circulars, 54.

THE SLAVE-TRADE IN THE SPANISH COLONIES OF AMERICA: THE ASSIENTO 1 1

INTRODUCTION:

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THIE PACT COLONIAL " AND THE ASSIENTO

President Monroe in his famous message to Congress, December 2, 1823, aimed both at the attempts at colonization which Europe might be led to make upon American soil, and the efforts which Spain might make to place its emancipated colonies again under her yoke. Europe saw with displeasure that the watch-word "America for the Americans," by which phrase they briefly and incompletely condensed the purport of the message, had a double significance, political above all for the United States, but one almost exclusively economic for the countries of Latin-America, which adopted it with enthusiasm.

The policy of Spain with regard to her colonies, although it no longer, since Charles III, sanctioned the system of ruthless exploitation which had been in force during two centuries, was incapable of adapting itself to the modern necessities of the life of nations. The colonies had been ruined by a régime of exaggerated exclusivism and of unbounded deception, the latter continuing when they tried to abandon the former. It would be difficult in our day to imagine what the Spanish colonial system was in its beginning. Claiming by right of conquest the possession of the New World which they had discovered, and which Columbus had given them without knowing it, the Spaniards were the first to invent the absurd system known by the name of "pact colonial" or of reciprocal exclusiveness. The "pact colonial" consisted in its essence of the following: all the products of the colonies must be carried to the mother-country, upon Peninsula vessels, and bought by merchants from the Peninsula, who were invested with a second monopoly which was the counterpart of the first; to provide the colonies with all manufactured products

1 This article was translated from the French of Professor Scelle by Mrs. Edna K. Hoyt, of the Department of State, Washington, D. C.

which might be necessary to them. The results were fatal; the products of the colonies were bought excessively cheap, as they were in superabundance and had but a single market; on the other hand, the manufactured products of the mother-country reached exorbitant prices, being more insufficient to the demand as the colonies became more extended and more populous.

Lastly, the colonists, deprived of a merchant marine and condemned not to engage in manufactures, vegetated in a state of civilization as stagnant as it was precarious. When they wished to react, it was too late, they did not know how to go about it, and besides, one can not with impunity condemn human societies to ignore progress without lessening the social value of the individuals.

The disastrous effects of this system were felt more in the Spanish colonies than anywhere else, because it was a whole world which Spain proposed to place under this withering régime, and because, by the decay of her industries, the mother-country was less able than any other to satisfy the needs of her colonists and subjects beyond the seas. The results, therefore, of this lamentable policy were still felt at the period of the emancipation of the countries of Latin-America, of which they were one of the hidden but certain causes. One might wonder even how the New World could live under a régime so contrary to the nature of things, if one did not remember that illicit trade, or as they termed it then, colonial interloping," was raised there to the dignity of an institution. The colonies established in the Antilles by England, France, Holland, Denmark, Brazil itself in the hands of the Portuguese, and by the colony of the Sacrement, served as warehouses for the merchandise of Europe. The Spanish officials, better posted with regard to the needs of the colonists than the Government of Madrid, closed their eyes to the clandestine traffic, which besides was most lucrative to them, for when they did not carry it on themselves, they charged dearly for their toleration. That is the way that America was able to live.

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One of the most important factors of this illicit trade was the slave-trade, and the importance which the traffic in slaves took on on this head for maritime nations, rivals of Spain, came exclusively

from that. But how are we to account for the fact that Spain did not monopolize the slave traffic as the others, in what way explain why she left the monopoly of it, generally known under the name of Assiento, to such dangerous rivals? This is what we have undertaken to investigate. These studies have led us at the same time to inquire into the manner in which the American slave-trade was organized, and to fill a gap in history upon that point. Certain indications permit us to suppose that this kind of industry was invested at different periods with a considerable importance, not alone from an economic point of view, but from a political and diplomatic point of view as well. The maritime powers had sought to monopolize this branch of trade, especially when it was directed towards the Spanish colonies of America, and England had the exclusive exploitation of it granted to her by Philip V at the Congress of Utrecht. The famous clause of the Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1713, the article of "L'Assiento," was not an isolated fact; it was scarcely credible that the sole desire of securing to themselves a few advantages was the reason for the care which the English took to monopolize that branch of commerce. It was interesting to know the antecedents of that Assiento and certain authors had investigated them. They knew that a great French company, the Company of Guinea, had obtained the monopoly at the accession of Philip V; that before it the Portuguese, the Genoese, and Germans had had it; but that was about the extent of the information which they had. This curiosity deserved to be better satisfied. But in the first place what is an Assiento, and what is the origin of the Assiento of the blacks?

Assiento is a term of Spanish public law which designates every contract made for the purpose of public utility, for the administration of a public service, between the Spanish Government and private individuals. The administration of a tax, an enterprise of colonization, of public works, of recruiting the militia, of providing

2 Some rather complicated but very fruitful researches have led us to the principal depositories of archives of France, England, Spain, and Portugal. We have recorded the results in a work entitled: La traite négrière aux Indes de Castille (The slave-trade in the Indies of Castile), three volumes, two of which have been published, by Larose et Tenin, Paris, 1905.

manual labor or materials was done by Assiento. When it was a question of realizing upon the vast territories with which Columbus had endowed Castile, new types of Assiento made their appearance: they had Assientos for colonization and for discoveries by which an "adelantade," an adventurer, undertook to explore, to clear up, to people a specified region. They had more restricted Assientos for the transportation of objects necessary to the new colonists, etc.; lastly, they had Assientos for providing manual labor.

The latter early made their appearance, for very soon the aborigines and the Spanish colonists were found to be inadequate for the improvement of the new lands. The aborigines were an inactive. lazy race, showing so great sluggishness that they preferred death to work. The cruelties and the exploitations of the still merciless conquerors were such that they may be accused, without too much exaggeration, of having perpetrated the slaughter of an entire race. The methods of "apportionment" and of " and of "distribution" (repartimientos et encomiendas) established a system of slavery of incredible inhumanity which decimated the aboriginal populations. As to the European colonists, they were unaccustomed to work, unfitted to endure the climate; besides the colonist is not a tiller of the soil, he is a manufacturer, a merchant, an official, he does not improve the land.

Moreover, the colonizing was badly done; the Antilles, more and better stocked, were abandoned to the advantage of the continent, beginning especially with the period when gold mines were discovered. But for these mines particularly laborers were needed; the gangs of unfortunate natives worked slowly and produced little; one negro was worth four of them, it was said, and the climate was so habitually healthful for the negroes "that it seemed made for them. as much as for the orange trees," says Herrera,3 the official chronicler of the Spanish monarchy. The negroes became especially necessary to the plantations when sugar-cane was introduced and people understood that the production of precious metals would not be inexhaustible.

It was not difficult in the beginning to procure them; there was a

3 Ibid., II, 3, 14.

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