DECREE of the Conseil d’Etat of the King, which, from the 10th of November next, converts into Bonuses and Premiums the exemption from the half duty granted to colonial goods originating from the Trade in Black People

On what was represented to the King, being in his Conseil: that one of the principal encouragements granted to the trade in nègres, by the Letters Patent of January 1716 and the later Decrees and Regulations, consists in the exemption from half of the entry duties and local duties on sugars of the French Islands of America that come from the sale of nègres in those islands and are consumed in the kingdom; but that this favor, which offered great encouragement at a time when the value of the sugars brought into the Kingdom to be consumed there was equal to the proceeds of the sale of the nègres, has become worthless for a large part of the expeditions, since the number of nègres carried to the French Islands of America, which in 1716 rose to only two or three thousand nègres, has been raised step by step to fifteen thousand, without the import of sugars consumed in the Kingdom having been able to keep the same pace.