This discussion will therefore be, in the main, a series of expositions. The principles of scriptural exposition are simply those of common sense; and it will be the writer's aim so to explain them that they shall commend themselves to every honest mind, and to rid them of the sophisms of the Abolitionists. But before we proceed to this discussion we propose to devote a few pages to the exposition of the historical facts which place the attitude of Virginia in the proper light. CHAPTER II. THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. This iniquitous traffick, beginning with the importation of negroes into Hispaniola in 1503, was first pursued by the English in 1562, under Sir John Hawkins, who sold a cargo at the same island that year. The news of his success reaching Queen Elizabeth, she became a partner with him in other voyages. Under the Stuart kings, repeated charters were given to noblemen and merchants, to form companies for this trade, in one of which, the Duke of York, afterwards James II., was a partner. The colony of Virginia was planted in 1607. The first cargo of negroes, only twenty in number, arrived there in a Dutch vessel in 1620, and was bought by the colonists. All the commercial nations of Europe were implicated in the trade; and all the colonies in America were supplied, to a greater or less extent, with slave labour from Africa, whether Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch. But England became, on the whole, the leader in this trade, and was unrivalled by any, save her daughter, New England.