Thomas Clarkson on the “glorious” victory of the abolition of the slave trade in England (1808)
About this Quotation:
Thomas Clarkson is justifiably in very high spirits in 1808 with the successful passing of legislation in the British Parliament to abolish the slave trade. He and his fellow abolitionists knew that this was a first but important step towards finally abolishing slavery (which would not occur in British colonies until the 1830s). What lies behind the tone of this final passage in the book is the realisation that an injustice which had survived for millennia, and which had become the unquestioned orthodoxy of all “right thinking people”, had been overturned by a peaceful campaign of moral suasion and political campaigning, and not by violence.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2009: Frédéric Bastiat on the state as the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else (1848)
- 2008: Lord Kames states that the “hoarding appetite” is part of human nature and that it is the foundation of our notion of property rights (1779)
- 2007: William Graham Sumner reminds us never to forget the “Forgotten Man”, the ordinary working man and woman who pays the taxes and suffers under government regulation (1883)
- 2007: Lord Macaulay writes a devastating review of Southey’s Colloquies in which the Poet Laureate’s ignorance of the real condition of the working class in England is exposed (1830)
- 2005: Edmund Burke asks a key question of political theory: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (how is one to be defended against the very guardians who have been appointed to guard us?) (1756)
Other quotes about Colonies, Slavery & Abolition:
- 2009: Frederick Douglass makes a New Year’s resolution to gain his freedom from slavery (1836)
- 2009: Emerson on the right of self-ownership of slaves to themselves and to their labor (1863)
- 2009: Sir William Blackstone declares unequivocally that slavery is “repugnant to reason, and the principles of natural law” and that it has no place in English law (1753)
- 2008: Harriet Martineau on the institution of slavery, “restless slaves”, and the Bill of Rights (1838)
- 2007: John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion (1866)
- 2007: The ex-slave Frederick Douglass reveals that reading speeches by English politicians produced in him a deep love of liberty and hatred of oppression (1882)
- 2007: Jeremy Bentham relates a number of “abominations” to the French National Convention urging them to emancipate their colonies (1793)
- 2007: Jean-Baptiste Say argues that home-consumers bear the brunt of the cost of maintaining overseas colonies and that they also help support the lavish lifestyles of the planter and merchant classes (1817)
- 2007: J.B. Say argues that colonial slave labor is really quite profitable for the slave owners at the expense of the slaves and the home consumers (1817)
- 2006: John Millar argues that as a society becomes wealthier domestic freedom increases, even to the point where slavery is thought to be pernicious and economically inefficient (1771)
- 2006: Adam Smith notes that colonial governments might exercise relative freedom in the metropolis but impose tyranny in the distant provinces (1776)
- 2005: Less well known is Thomas Jefferson’s First Draft of the Declaration of Independence in which he denounced the slave trade as an “execrable Commerce” and slavery itself as a “cruel war against nature itself” (1776)
12 March, 2007
 | Thomas Clarkson on the “glorious” victory of the abolition of the slave trade in England (1808) |
Thomas Clarkson, in his History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808), concludes with the following optimistic view of the possibilities of human reason and sympathy:
Thus ended one of the most glorious contests, after a continuance for twenty years, of any ever carried on in any age or country. A contest, not of brutal violence, but of reason. A contest between those, who felt deeply for the happiness and the honour of their fellow-creatures, and those, who, through vicious custom and the impulse of avarice, had trampled under-foot the sacred rights of their nature, and had even attempted to efface all title to the divine image from their minds.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
Thus ended one of the most glorious contests, after a continuance for twenty years, of any ever carried on in any age or country. A contest, not of brutal violence, but of reason. A contest between those, who felt deeply for the happiness and the honour of their fellow-creatures, and those, who, through vicious custom and the impulse of avarice, had trampled under-foot the sacred rights of their nature, and had even attempted to efface all title to the divine image from their minds.
Of the immense advantages of this contest I know not how to speak. Indeed, the very agitation of the question, which it involved, has been highly important. Never was the heart of man so expanded. Never were its generous sympathies so generally and so perseveringly excited. These sympathies, thus called into existence, have been useful in the preservation of a national virtue. For any thing we know, they may have contributed greatly to form a counteracting balance against the malignant spirit, generated by our almost incessant wars during this period, so as to have preserved us from barbarism.
It has been useful also in the discrimination of moral character. In private life it has enabled us to distinguish the virtuous from the more vicious part of the community* . It has shown the general philanthropist. It has unmasked the vicious in spite of his pretension to virtue. It has afforded us the same knowledge in public life. It has separated the moral statesman from the wicked politician. It has shown us who, in the legislative and executive offices of our country are fit to save, and who to destroy, a nation.
It has furnished us also with important lessons. It has proved what a creature man is! how devoted he is to his own interest! to what a length of atrocity he can go, unless fortified by religious principle! But as if this part of the prospect would be too afflicting, it has proved to us, on the other hand, what a glorious instrument he may become in the hands of his Maker; and that a little virtue, when properly leavened, is made capable of counteracting the effects of a mass of vice!