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Both their annuity and trading stocks had, by this time, been reduced more than two millions each, by several different payments from government; so that this fourth amounted only to £3,662,784:8:6. In 1748, all the demands of the company upon the king of Spain, in consequence of the assiento contract, were, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, given up for what was supposed an equivalent.
"But the part which we have borne in the prosecution of this war, entitling us to some distinction in the terms of peace, I have insisted, and obtained, that the Assiento, or contract for furnishing the Spanish West Indies with negroes, shall be made with us for the term of thirty years, in the same manner as it has been enjoyed by the French for ten years past.
English merchants acquired special privileges at Cadiz by the Treaty of Utrecht; and the Assiento gave to the South Sea Company a monopoly of importing slaves into New Spain, and enabled it to secure, "by the ingenuity of British merchants," the greater part of the general commerce of the Spanish colonies.
This famous convention, concluded at the Pardo on the fourteenth day of January, imported, that within six weeks to be reckoned from the day on which the ratifications were exchanged, two ministers plenipotentiaries should meet at Madrid, to confer, and finally regulate the respective pretentions of the two crowns, with relation to the trade and navigation in America and Europe, and to the limits of Florida and Carolina, as well as concerning other points which remained likewise to be adjusted, according to the former treaties subsisting between the two nations: that the plenipotentiaries should finish their conferences within the space of eight months: that in the meantime no progress should be made in the fortifications of Florida and Carolina: that his catholic majesty should pay to the king of Great Britain, the sum of ninety-five thousand pounds, for a balance due to the crown and subjects of Great Britain, after deduction made of the demands of the crown and subjects of Spain: that this sum should be employed for the satisfaction, discharge, and payment of the demands of the British subjects upon the crown of Spain: that this reciprocal discharge, however, should not extend or relate to the accounts and differences which subsisted and were to bo settled between the crown of Spain and the assiento company, nor to any particular or private contracts that might subsist between either of the two crowns, or their ministers, with the subjects of the other; or between the subjects of each nation respectively: that his catholic majesty should cause the sum of ninety-five thousand pounds to be paid at London within four mouths, to be reckoned from the day on which the ratifications were exchanged.
The Assiento contract is to be suspended; you are to purchase this sum at the price of an exclusive trade, pursuant to a national treaty, and of an immense debt of God knows how many hundred thousand pounds due from Spain to the South Sea Company.
Their lordships were to declare openly to the Dutch, "That no extremity should make Her Majesty depart from insisting to have the Assiento for her own subjects, and to keep Gibraltar and Port Mahon; but if the States would agree with her upon these three heads, she would be content to reduce the trade of Spain and the West Indies, to the condition it was in under the late Catholic King Charles II."
The President of Panama, however, in his letter to the Queen, writes that he had but 1200 men, mostly negroes, mulattos and Indians, besides 200 slaves of the Assiento. That the president made efforts to raise men to oppose the retreat of the buccaneers, but received no support from the inhabitants, is proved by Spanish documents in Add. MSS. 11,268, gives the date as 25th February. Wm.
Once before 1713, the year of the Assiento Contract of the Peace of Utrecht, and several times after this date, prohibitive duties were placed on Negroes to guard against their too rapid increase.
They were entitled to supply Negroes, in such and such number, annually to the Spanish Plantations; and besides this delightful branch of trade, to have the privilege of selling certain quantities of their manufactured articles on those coasts; quantities regulated briefly by this stipulation, That their Assiento Ship was to be of 600 tons burden, so many and no more.
"I said before, that it was on the faith of the country that we embarked our property in these islands. You are not perhaps aware, that when in the reign of Queen Anne the Assiento treaty was made, by which we obtained the privilege of supplying all the islands with slaves, it was considered as one of the most important acquisitions that could be obtained.
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