FEW but readers of old colonial state papers and records are aware that between the years 1649 and 1690 a lively trade was carried on between England and the "plantations," as the colonies were then termed, in political prisoners, who were sentenced to banishment in the former country and shipped to the colonies, where they were sold by auction to the colonists for various terms of years, sometimes for life, as slaves. The government of the Commonwealth appears to have been the first to adopt this convenient if unjustifiable method of disposing of troublesome adversaries; and in Cromwell's proclamation to the Irish people, dated Youghal, January, 1649, and written in answer to the declaration of the Irish prelates at Clonmacnoise, we find the following: "The question is of the destruction of life, or of that which is but little inferior to it-to wit, of banishment.