The happy revolution of 1688, which placed William and Mary on the throne, arrested for a time the activity of the royal company for slave trading, by throwing the business open to the whole nation. For one of the reforms, stipulated with the new government, was the abolition of all monopolies. But the company did not give up its operations; and it even succeeded in exacting from Parliament an indemnity of £10,000 _per annum_ for the loss of its exclusive privilege. But the most splendid triumph of British enterprise was that achieved by the treaty of Utrecht, 1712, between Queen Anne and Spain. By a compact called the _Asiento_ treaty, the Spanish monarch resigned to the English South Sea Company, the exclusive slave trade even between Africa and the Spanish colonies. Four thousand eight hundred slaves were to be furnished to the Spanish colonies annually, for thirty years, paying to the King of Spain an impost of thirty-three and a third dollars per head; but the company had the privilege of introducing as many more as they could sell, paying half duty upon them. The citizens of every other nation, even Spaniards themselves, were prohibited from bringing a single slave. The British Queen and the King of Spain became stockholders in the venture, to the extent of one-fourth each; the remainder of the stock was left to British citizens. And Anne, in her speech from the throne, detailing to her Parliament the provisions of the treaty of Utrecht, congratulated them on this monopoly of slave trading, as the most splendid triumph of her arms and diplomacy.[1] Meantime, the African Company, with private adventurers at a later day, plied the trade with equal activity, for furnishing the British colonies. Finally, in 1749, every restriction upon private enterprise was removed; and the slave trade was thrown open to all Englishmen; for, says the statute: "the slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain." But every resource of legislation, and even of war, was employed during the eighteenth century to secure the monopoly of the trade to British subjects, and to enlarge the market for their commodity in all the colonies. To this end, the royal government of the plantations, which afterwards became the United States, was perseveringly directed. The complaint of Hugh Drysdale, Deputy Governor of Virginia, in 1726, that when a tax was imposed to check the influx of Africans, "the interfering interest of the African company has obtained the repeal of the law,"[2] was common to him and all the patriotic rulers of the Southern colonies. [Footnote 1: Bancroft, Hist. U. S., vol. iii., p. 232. Com. Boutwell, Slave Trade. Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 414.] [Footnote 2: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 415.]