336 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY regarded as fair prey. Synods of the Churches — Protestant as well as Catholic — countenanced the trade. Two Synods of the Protestant Churches held in France, at Rouen and Alengon in 1637, to consider a question raised by certain "over-scrupulous persons " who ''thought it unlawful that many Protestant merchants who had long traded in slaves from Guinea to America should continue that traffic, as inconsistent with Christian charity," decreed after long discussion that slavery, always acknowledged to be of the right of nations, ''is not condemned in the Word of God." Therefore they contented themselves with exhorting merchants who had liberty to trade not to abuse that liberty contrary to Christian charity, and not to dispose of those poor infidels except to such Christians as will use them with humanity, and above all will take care to instruct them in the true religion. The " inestimable advantage which the slaves may reap by becoming Christians and saving their souls," was put forward by the righteous of that day as one of the strongest arguments in favour of continuing a traffic which was so profitable as to enlist very powerful support.

How far this reason and the mild advice offered by the Synods of the Churches was likely to influence the Europeans of different nationalities who were locally engaged in the coast trade, may be gathered from the descriptions which are given by Barbot and other contemporaries. The conduct of the Portuguese has already been described. Of the English, Barbot says that the trade of the Royal African Company "daily decays through the ill management of their servants in Guinea, who, to their own vices, add those of the people among whom they live and converse. . . . The fondness of the English for their beloved liquor, punch, is so great, even among the officers and factors, that whatever comes of it, there must be a bowl upon all occasions, which causes the death of many of them. Consequently the garrison (of Cape Coast Castle) becomes very weak, the survivors