It had changed with the increase in the number of slaves, and with the increased profit from their labor.

Before the Revolutionary war, Virginia had earnestly petitioned George III.

to prohibit the importation of slaves from Africa, and the answer of His Majesty was a peremptory instruction to the Royal Governor at Williamsburg, "not to assent to any law of the Colonial Legislature by which the importation of slaves should in any respect be prohibited or obstructed." Anti- slavery opinion was developed in a far greater degree in the American Colonies than in the mother country.

When the Convention of 1787 inserted in the Federal Constitution a clause giving to Congress the power to abolish the slave-trade after the year 1808, they took a step far in advance of European opinion.

A society was formed in London, in the year 1787, for the suppression of the slave-trade.
Although it was organized under the auspices of the distinguished philanthropists, William Clarkson and Granville Sharp, it had at the time as little influence upon the popular opinion of England as the early efforts of William Lloyd Garrison and the Society for the Abolition of Domestic Slavery had upon the public opinion of the United States.