No records exist, accessible to the historian, by which the numbers of slaves brought to this country by New England traders can be ascertained. Their operations were mingled with those of Englishmen from the mother country. While the total of the operations of the latter, including their importations into the Spanish colonies, was greatly larger than that of the New Englanders, the latter probably sustained at least an equal share of the trade to the thirteen colonies, up to the time of the Revolution; and thenceforward, to the year 1808, when the importations were nominally arrested, they carried on nearly the whole. So that the presence of the major part of the four millions of Africans now in America, is due to New England. Some further illustrations will be given of the method and spirit in which that section conducted the trade. The number of The Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser for September 12th, 1763, contains the following: "By a gentleman who arrived here a few days ago from the coast of Africa, we are informed of the arrivals of Captains Morris, Ferguson, and Wickham, of this port, who write very discouraging accounts of the trade upon the coast; and that upwards of two hundred gallons of real rum had been given for slaves per head, and scarcely to be got at any rate for that commodity. This must be sensibly felt by this poor and distressed Government, _the inhabitants whereof being very large adventurers in the trade, having sent and about sending upwards of twenty sail of vessels_, computed to carry in the whole about nine thousand hogsheads of rum, a quantity much too large for the places on the coast, where that commodity has generally been vended. We hear that many vessels are also gone and going from the neighbouring Governments, likewise from Barbadoes, from which place a large cargo of rum had arrived before our informant left the coast, of which they gave two hundred and seventy gallons for a prime slave."