Note 802 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

Such was the king's zeal in favour of the slave-trade, that in 1770 ‘he issued an instruction under his own hand commanding the governor (of Virginia), upon pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no law by which the importation of slaves should be in any respect prohibited or obstructed.’ Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. iii. p. 456: so that, as Mr. Bancroft indignantly observes, p. 469, while the courts of law had decided ‘that as soon as any slave set his foot on English ground he becomes free, the king of England stood in the path of humanity, and made himself the pillar of the colonial slave-trade.’ The shuffling conduct of Pitt in this matter makes it hard for any honest man to forgive him. Compare Brougham's Statesmen, vol. ii. pp. 14, 103–105; Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. iii. pp. 131, 278, 279; Belsham's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. x. pp. 34, 35; Life of Wakefield, vol. i. p. 197; Porter's Progress of the Nation, vol. iii. p. 426; Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. ii. p. 157; and the striking remarks of Francis, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxxii. p. 949.