silver per year[94] ended in this insignificant fashion.

Although the Grillo contract and the other attempts to begin a slave
trade with the Spanish colonies had proved much less successful than
the Company of Royal Adventurers had hoped, a great deal had been
accomplished toward bringing to light the fundamental difficulties of
this trade. In the first place not much could be accomplished in the
way of developing this trade so long as the Spanish government
maintained its attitude of uncompromising hostility toward all
foreigners notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish colonists would
gladly have welcomed the slave traders. Furthermore, although the
English government had signified its willingness to disregard the
restrictions of the Navigation Acts in this instance, the hostile
attitude assumed by the planters toward the trade in slaves to the
Spanish colonies also had to be taken into consideration. Whenever the
planters were able to do so they endeavored to prevent the exportation
to the Spanish colonies of slaves which they maintained were very much
needed on their own plantations.

This opposition to the trade in Negroes to the Spanish colonies was
only one of the several ways in which the colonists manifested their
hostility toward the mercantile element in general and the Company of
Royal Adventurers in particular. Freedom of trade with all the world
seemed very desirable to the planters who regarded the restrictions of
the Navigation Acts as gross favoritism and partiality to the rising
mercantile class. The monopoly of supplying the colonies with slaves,
conferred upon the Company of Royal Adventurers, was most cordially
hated on account of the great degree of dependence placed upon slave
labor in the plantations. As a result of this conflict of interests
the planters early resorted to numerous devices such as the laws for
the protection of debtors, to embarrass the company in the exercise of
its monopoly. Since the company had received its exclusive privileges
by a charter from the crown the English planters in the West Indies
soon found that their trouble with the Company of Royal Adventurers
brought them also into direct conflict with the king. In this way the
planters enjoyed the distinction of being among the first to begin the
opposition which later, in the Great Revolution, resulted in the
overthrow of James II and the royal prerogative.

GEORGE F. ZOOK.