Reynal estimates the whole number of negroes stolen from Africa before 1776 at nine millions; Bancroft at something more than six millions. Of these, British subjects carried at least half: and to the above numbers must be added a quarter of a million thrown by Englishmen into the Atlantic on the voyage.[3] As the traffick continued in full activity until 1808, it is a safe estimate that the number of victims to British cupidity taken from Africa was increased to five millions. The profit made by Englishmen upon the three millions carried to America before 1776, could not have been less than four hundred millions of dollars. The negroes cost the traders nothing but worthless trinkets, damaged fire-arms, and New England rum: they were usually paid for in hard money at the place of sale. This lucrative trade laid the foundation, to a great degree, for the commercial wealth of London, Bristol, and Liverpool. The capital which now makes England the workshop and _emporium_ of the world, was in large part born of the African slave trade. Especially was this the chief source of the riches which founded the British empire in Hindostan. The South Sea and the African Companies were the prototypes and pioneers of that wonderful institution, the East India Company; and the money by which the latter was set on foot was derived mainly from the profitable slave-catching of the former. When the direct returns of the African trade in the eighteenth century are remembered; when it is noted how much colonial trade has contributed to British greatness, and when it is considered that England's colonial system was wholly built upon African slavery, the intelligent reader will be convinced that the slave trade was the corner-stone of the present splendid prosperity of that Empire. [Footnote 3: Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 411, 412.]