Negroes were scarce and dear in San Juan at this period, which caused the authorities to petition the emperor for permission to each settler to bring two slaves free of duty, and, this being granted, it gave rise to abuse, as the city officers in their address of thanks to the empress, stated at the same time that many took advantage of the privilege to transfer or sell their permit in Seville without coming to the island. Then it was enacted that slaves should be introduced only by authorized traffickers, who soon raised the price to 60 or 70 Castilian dollars per head. The crown officers in the island protested, and asked that every settler might be permitted to bring 10 or 12 negroes, paying the duty of 2 ducats per head, which had been imposed by King Ferdinand in 1513. A new deposit of gold had been discovered about this time (1533), and the hope that others might be found now induced the colonists to buy the negroes from the authorized traders on credit at very high prices, to be paid with the gold which the slaves should be made instrumental in discovering. But the longed-for metal did not appear. The purchasers could not pay. Many had their property embargoed and sold, and were ruined. Some were imprisoned, others escaped to the mountains or left the island.

From 1536 to 1553 the authorities kept asking for negroes; sometimes offering to pay duty, at others soliciting their free introduction; now complaining that the colonists escaped _with their slaves_ to Mexico and Peru, then lamenting that the German merchants, who had the monopoly of the traffic, took them to all the other Antilles, but would bring none to this island. However, 1,500 African slaves entered here at different times during those seventeen years, without reckoning the large numbers that were introduced as contraband.

Philip II tried to reduce the exorbitant prices exacted by the German monopolists of the West Indian slave-trade, but, finding that his efforts to do so diminished the importation, he revoked his ordinances.

A Genoese banking-house, having made him large advances to help equip the great Armada for the invasion of England, obtained the next monopoly (1580).

During the course of the seventeenth century the privilege of introducing African slaves into the Antilles was sold successively to Genoese, Portuguese, Holland, French, and Spanish companies. The traffic was an exceedingly profitable one, not so much on account of the high prices obtained for the negroes as on account of the contraband trade in all kinds of merchandise that accompanied it. From 1613 to 1621 during the government of Felipe de Beaumont, 11 ship-loads of slaves entered San Juan harbor.

During the eighteenth century the traffic expanded still more. To induce England to abandon the cause of the House of Austria, for which that nation was fighting, Philip V offered it the exclusive privilege of introducing 140,000 negro slaves into the Spanish-American colonies within a period of thirty years; the monopolists to pay 33-13 silver crowns for each negro introduced, to the Spanish Government.[66]

War interrupted this contract several times, and long before the termination of the thirty years the English ceased to import slaves.

Several contracts for the importation of slaves into the Antilles were made from 1760 to the end of the century. First a contract was made with Miguel Uriarte to take 15,000 slaves to different parts of Spanish America. In 1765 the king sanctioned the introduction by the Caracas company of 2,000 slaves to replace the Indians in Caracas and Maraeaibo, who had died of smallpox. All duties on the introduction of negroes into Santo Domingo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Margarita, and Trinidad were commuted in the same year for a moderate capitation tax, and the Spanish firm of Aguirre, Aristegui & Co. was authorized to provide the Antilles with negroes, on condition of reducing the price 10 pesos per head, besides the amount of abolished duty.

This firm abused the privileges granted, and the inhabitants of all the colonies, excepting Peru, Chile, and the Argentina, were allowed to provide themselves, as best they could, with slaves from the French colonies while the war lasted (1780).

Four years later, January 16, 1784, a certain Lenormand, of Xantes, received the king's permission to take a ship-load of African slaves to Puerto Rico on condition of paying 6 per cent of the product to the Government.

In this same year the barbarous custom of branding the slaves was abolished.

The abominable traffic was declared entirely free in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Puerto Rico by royal decree, February 28, 1789. Foreign ships were placed under certain restrictions, but a bounty of 4 pesos per head was paid for negroes brought in Spanish bottoms, to meet which a per capita tax of 2 pesos per head on domestic slaves was levied.

By this time the famous debates in the British Parliament and other signs of the times announced the dawn of freedom for the oppressed African race. Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton, the English abolitionists, continued their denunciations of the demoralizing institution. Their effects were crowned with success in 1833. The traffic was abolished, and ten years later Great Britain emancipated more than twelve million slaves in her East and West Indian possessions, paying the masters over one hundred millions of dollars as indemnity.

Spain agreed in 1817 to abolish the slave-trade in her dominions by May 30,1820. By Articles 3 and 4 of the convention, England offered to pay to Spain $20,000,000 as complete compensation to his Catholic Majesty's subjects who were engaged in the traffic.

The Spanish Government illegally employed this money to purchase from Russia a fleet of five ships of the line and eight frigates.

The slaves in Puerto Rico were not emancipated until March 22, 1873, when 31,000 were manumitted in one day, at a cost to the Government of 200 pesos each, plus the interest on the bonds that were issued.

The nature of the relations between the master and the slave in Puerto Rico probably did not differ much from that which existed between them in the other Spanish colonies. But these relations began to assume an aspect of distrust and severity on the one hand and sullen resentment on the other when the war of extermination between whites and blacks in Santo Domingo and the establishment of a negro republic in Haiti made it possible for the flame of negro insurrection to be wafted across the narrow space of water that separates the two islands.

There was sufficient ground for such apprehension. The free colored population in Puerto Rico at that time (1830-'34) numbered 127,287, the slaves 34,240, as against 162,311 whites, among whom many were of mixed blood.[67] Prim, the governor-general, to suppress every attempt at insurrection, issued the proclamation, of which the following is a synopsis:

"I, John Prim, Count of Ecus, etc., etc., etc.

"Whereas, The critical circumstances of the times and the afflictive condition of the countries in the neighborhood of this island, some of which are torn by civil war, and others engaged in a war of extermination between the white and black races; it is incumbent on me to dictate efficacious measures to prevent the spread of these calamities to our pacific soil.... I have decreed as follows:

"ARTICLE 1. All offenses committed by individuals of African race, whether free or slaves, shall be judged by court-martial.

"ART. 2. Any individual of African race, whether free or slave, who shall offer armed resistance to a white, shall be shot, if a slave, and have his right hand cut off by the public executioner, if a free man. Should he be wounded he shall be shot.

"ART. 3. If any individual of African race, whether slave or free, shall insult, menace, or maltreat, in any way, a white person, he will be condemned to five years of penal servitude, if a slave, and according to the circumstances of the case, if free.

"ART. 4. The owners of slaves are hereby authorized to correct and chastise them for slight misdemeanors, without any civil or military functionary having the right to interfere.

"ART. 5. If any slave shall rebel against his master, the latter is authorized to kill him on the spot.

"ART. 6 orders the military commanders of the 8 departments of the island to decide all cases of offenses committed by colored people within twenty-four hours of their denunciation."

This Draconic decree is signed, Puerto Rico, May 31, 1843.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 66: Treaty of Madrid, March 16, 1713, ratified by the treaty of Utrecht. There were two kinds of silver crowns, one of 8 pesetas, the other of 10, worth respectively 4 and 5 English shillings.]

[Footnote 67: Flinter, p. 211.]

CHAPTER XXXII

INCREASE OF POPULATION

ALL statements of definite numbers with respect to the aboriginal population of this island are essentially fabulous. Columbus touched at only one port on the western shore. He remained there but a few days and did not come in contact with the inhabitants. Ponce and his men conquered but a part of the island, and had no time to study the question of population, even if they had had the inclination to do so.

They did not count the enemy in time of war, and only interested themselves in the number of prisoners which to them constituted the spoils of conquest. Any calculation regarding the numbers that remained at large, based on the number of Indians distributed, can not be correct.

The same may be said of the computations of the population of the island made by Abbad, O'Reilly, and others at a time when there was not a correct statistical survey existing in the most civilized countries of Europe. None of these computations exceed the limits of mere conjecture.

With regard to the attempts to explain the causes of the decay and ultimate disappearance of the aboriginal race, this subject also appears to be involved in considerable doubt and obscurity, notwithstanding the positive statements of native writers regarding it. It has been impossible to ascertain in what degree they became amalgamated by intermarriage with the conquerors; yet, that it has been to a much larger degree than generally supposed, is proved by the fact that many of the inhabitants, classed as white, have, both in their features and manners, definite traces of the Indian race.[68]

With respect to the census taken by the Spanish authorities at different times, though they may have taken great pains to obtain correct statistical accounts, there is little doubt that the real numbers greatly exceeded those which appear in the official returns.

The reason for this discrepancy is supposed by the author mentioned to have been the _direct contribution_ which was levied on agricultural property, inducing the landed proprietors to conceal the real number of their slaves in order to make their crops appear to have been _smaller_ than they were.

Nor does it appear that the increase in the population of Puerto Rico is so much indebted to immigration as is generally supposed; for, notwithstanding the advantages offered to colonists by the Government in 1815, and the influx of settlers from Santo Domingo and Venezuela during the civil wars in these republics, there were only 2,833 naturalized foreigners in the island in 1830. It appears also that the Spanish immigration from the revolted colonies did not exceed 7,000 souls.

Puerto Rico had the reputation of being very poor, consequently, no immigrants were attracted by the prospect of money-making. The increase in the population of this island is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that three-fourths of the inhabitants are engaged in agricultural pursuits, which, of all occupations, are most conducive to health. To which must be added the people's frugal habits, the easy morals, the effect of climate, and the fecundity of the women of all mixed races. These, and the peace which the island enjoyed in the beginning of the nineteenth century, together with the abolition of some of the restrictions on commerce and industry, promoted an era of prosperity the like of which the inhabitants had never before known, and the natural consequence was increase in numbers.

"In those days," says Colonel Flinter, "if some perfect stranger had dropped from the clouds as it were, on this island, naked, without any other auxiliaries than health and strength, he might have married the next day and maintained a family without suffering more hardships or privations than fall to the lot of every laborer in the ordinary process of clearing and cultivating a piece of land."

The earliest information on the subject was given by Alexander O'Reilly, the royal commissioner to the Antilles in 1765, who enumerates a list of 24 towns and settlements with a total population of

_Free_ men, women, and children of all colors....39,846 Slaves of both sexes, including their children ........5,037 Total.................................................44,883

Abbad, in his "general statistics of the island," corresponding to the end of the year 1776, gives the details of the population in 30 "partidas," or ecclesiastical districts, as follows:

Whites 29,263 Free colored people 33,808 Free blacks 2,803 Other free people ("agregados") 7,835 Slaves 6,537 ------ Total 80,246

That is to say, an increase of 7-311 per cent per annum during the eleven years elapsed since O'Reilly's computation, which was a period of constant apprehension of attacks by pirates and privateers.

From 1782 to 1802 there were three censuses taken showing the following totals:

In 1782 81,180 souls.