Thus, ten coarse
blankets made one piece, a musket one piece, a keg of powder weighing
ten pounds was one, a piece of East-India blue calico four pieces, ten
copper kettles one piece, one piece of chintz two pieces, which made
the ten for which the slave was exchangeable: and at length he became
commercially known as a "piece of India." The bounty of thirteen livres
was computed in France upon the wholesale value of the trinkets and
notions which were used in trade with Africa.
The traffic by pieces is as old as the age of Herodotus;[C] it was
originally a dumb show of goods between two trading parties ignorant of
each other's language, but at length it represented a transaction which
the parties should have been ashamed to mention.
[Footnote C: _Melpomene_, Sec. 196.]
Although this second Senegal Company was protected by the rigid
exclusion, under pain of fine and confiscation, of all other Frenchmen
from the trade, it soon fell into debt and parted with its privilege to
a third Company, and this in turn was restricted by the formation of a
Guinea Company, so that it soon sold out to a fourth Senegal Company,
which passed in 1709 into the hands of Rouen merchants who started a
fifth; and this too was merged in the West-India Company which
was formed in 1718. So little did the agriculture of the islands,
overstocked with _engages_, justify as yet the slave-traders in the
losses and expenses which they incurred.
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