ages in English history."

The greatest of England's generals was removed from the head of the
army, and replaced by a Tory of no military ability. The allies of
England were most basely deserted; and a clause was inserted in the
treaty respecting Newfoundland to the following effect:--

"But it is allowed to the subjects of France to practise fishing and
to dry fish on land in that part only which stretches from the place
called Bonavista to the Northern Point of the said Island, and from
thence, running down by the Western Side, reaches as far as the place
called Point Riche."

What compensation was given by France in return for this right to
catch and dry fish on a part of the Newfoundland shore?

That was the immense accession of guilty wealth acquired by the
Assiento Treaty, by which England obtained the monopoly of the
slave-trade to the Spanish colonies.

In the one hundred and six years from 1680 to 1786 England sent
2,130,000 slaves to America and the West Indies.

On this point Lecky writes: "It may not be uninteresting to observe
that, among the few parts of the Peace of Utrecht which appear to have
given unqualified satisfaction at home, was the Assiento contract,
which made of England the great slave-trader of the world. _The last
prelate who took a leading part in English_ politics affixed his
signature to the treaty. A Te Deum, composed by Handel, was sung in
thanksgiving in the churches. Theological passions had been recently
more vehemently aroused; and theological controversies had for some
years acquired a wider and more absorbing interest in England than in
any period since the Commonwealth. But it does not yet appear to have
occurred to any class that a national policy, which made it its main
object to encourage the kidnapping of tens of thousands of negroes,
and their consignment to the most miserable slavery, might be at least
as inconsistent with the spirit of the Christian religion as either
the establishment of Presbyterianism or the toleration of prelacy in
Scotland."

Is it not characteristic that, just as the Tories of Queen Anne's time
were willing to prejudice the rights of a colony in return for the
infamous profits of the slave-trade, so the Tory of 1862, Lord Robert
Cecil, was among the chief Englishmen who sympathized with the
slaveholders who were then attacking the American Union?

It is equally characteristic that this first of the Primrose Dames,
Abigail Masham, quarrelle