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 Carácas company of 2,000 slaves to replace the Indians in Carácas and Maraeaíbo, 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.