1. Dr. Burgess, the present Bishop of Salisbury, on Colonial Slavery.
In our last Number we adduced the testimony of many distinguished prelates of the Church of England against the evils of Slavery. There remains one living Prelate whom it would be unpardonable for us to omit; we mean the present Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Burgess. In the year 1789, this learned and excellent person published a pamphlet, which we fear has been long out of print, and is only now to be found in such libraries as that of the British Museum, entitled, “Considerations on the abolition of Slavery, and the Slave Trade, upon grounds of natural, religious, and political duty.” A Liverpool Clergyman of the name of Harris, had published a pamphlet in defence of slavery, which he represented as a dispensation of Providence,—a state of society recognised by the Gospel;—in which the reciprocal duties of masters and slaves are founded on the principle of both being servants of Christ, and are enforced by the Divine rules of Christian charity. The following are some of the indignant observations of the good Bishop, on witnessing such a prostitution of the sacred truths and obligations of religion:—
“Reciprocal duties!” he exclaims, “Reciprocal duties!—To have an adequate sense of the propriety of these terms, we must forget the humane provisions of the Hebrew law, as well as the liberal indulgence of Roman slavery, and think only of West India slavery! of unlimited, uncompensated, brutal slavery, and then judge what reciprocity there can be between absolute authority and absolute subjection; and how the Divine rule of Christian charity can be said to enforce the reciprocal duties of the West India slave and his master. Reciprocity is inconsistent with every degree of real slavery.” “Slavery cannot be called one of the species of civil subordination. A slave is a non-entity in civil society.” “Law and slavery are contradictory terms.”
The Bishop’s treatise is one among many proofs that the Abolitionists from the first contemplated the ultimate extinction of slavery as the end of their labours.
“Such oppression,” says the Bishop, (meaning the state of slavery), “and such traffic” (meaning the slave trade), “must be swept away at one blow. Such horrid offences against God and nature can admit of no medium. Yet some of the more moderate apologists of slavery think that a medium may be adopted. They think that slavery ought not to be abolished, but modified and meliorated by good laws and regulations. It is well observed by Cicero, that ‘incidunt multæ sæpe causæ quæ conturbent animos utilitatis specie, non cum hoc deliberetur, Relinquendane sit honestas propter utilitatis magnitudinem (nam id quidem improbum est,) sed illud, Possitne id quod utile videatur fieri non turpiter.’ But it is impossible for slavery ‘fieri non turpiter.’” pp. 82, 83.
The Bishop proceeds to observe, that “All the laws hitherto made, have produced little or no benefit to the slaves. But there are many reasons why it is very improbable that such provisions should produce any effectual benefit. The power which is exercised over the slaves, and the severe coercion necessary to keep an immense superiority of numbers in absolute obedience to a few, and restrain them from insurrection, are incompatible with justice or humanity, and are obnoxious to abuses which no legal regulations can counteract. The power which a West Indian master has over his slave, it is impossible for the generality of masters or managers not to abuse. It is too great to be intrusted in the hands of men subject to human passions and infirmities. The best principles and most generous natures are perverted by the influence of passion and habit.”[[1]]
[1]. The poet Cowper seems to have entertained much the same opinion as the Bishop of Salisbury; for in one of his Letters, dated April, 1788, we find him saying: “Laws will, I suppose, be enacted for the more humane treatment of the Negroes; but who shall see to the execution of them? The planters will not, and the Negroes cannot. In fact, we know that laws of this tendency have not been wanting, enacted even amongst themselves; but there has been always a want of prosecutors, or righteous judges, deficiencies which will not be very easily supplied. The newspapers have lately told us, that these merciful masters, have on this occasion, been occupied in passing ordinances, by which the lives and limbs of their slaves are to be secured from wanton cruelty hereafter. But who does not immediately detect the artifice, or can give them a moment’s credit for any thing more than a design, by this show of lenity to avert the storm which they think hangs over them? On the whole, I fear there is reason to wish, for the honour of England, that the nuisance had never been troubled; lest we eventually make ourselves justly chargeable with the whole offence by not removing it. The enormity cannot be palliated: we can no longer plead that we were not aware of it, or that our attention was otherwise engaged; and shall be inexcusable, therefore, ourselves, if we leave the least part of it unredressed. Such arguments as Pharaoh might have used, to justify his destruction of the Israelites, substituting sugar for bricks, (‘ye are idle; ye are idle,’) may lie ready for our use also; but I think we can find no better.”
If these arguments of the Bishop be well founded, it follows, first, that the great mark at which every friend of humanity ought to aim, by all lawful expedients, is complete and irrevocable emancipation; secondly, that in the interim, as laws, when committed to the guardianship of the slave-holder, are merely waste paper, the Government and Legislature of this country should take the matter into their own hands, and shape their course to an ultimate extinction of an evil from which they cannot extract all the venom but by slaying the hydra itself; and thirdly, that too much weight should not be given to the representations of persons even of the “best principles and most generous natures,” when “perverted by the influence of passion and habit,” to apologize for, or wish to perpetuate, the enormities of this accursed system.
The Bishop in reply to those who defend or connive at West India slavery as a “dispensation of Providence,” and as, indirectly at least, sanctioned by the word of God, observes,
“Many attacks,” says his lordship, “have been made on the authority of Scripture; but nothing would more effectually subvert its authority than to prove that its injunctions are inconsistent with the common principles of benevolence, and inimical to the general rights of mankind. It would degrade the sanctity of Scripture; it would reverse all our ideas of God’s paternal attributes, and all arguments for the Divine origin of the Christian religion drawn from its precepts of universal charity and benevolence.” “That any custom so repugnant to the natural rights of mankind as the slave trade, or slavery the source and support of the slave trade, should be thought to be consonant to the principles of natural and revealed religion, is a paradox which it is difficult to reconcile with the reverence due to the records of our holy religion.”
His Lordship then proceeds to shew, 1st, That slavery and the slave trade are inconsistent with the principles of nature (in allusion to his opponent’s argument), deducible from Scripture. 2d. That no conclusion can be drawn in favour of West India slavery or the African slave trade (which the Bishop always classes and brands together) from particular transactions recorded in Scripture; both because the trade in slaves bears no resemblance to the slavery and slave trade in question, and because transactions merely recorded in Scripture history are not sanctioned by the record. 3d, That no conclusion can be formed from Hebrew laws respecting West Indian Slavery, because the conditions are by no means analogous; and because, even if they were, laws neither introduce nor justify every custom which they regulate. 4th, That the clearest and fullest permission of slavery to the Jews under the Law of Moses does not make it allowable to Christians, because the new law has succeeded to the ritual and judicial ordinances of the old; and we cannot reason from one state of things to another when any great revolution has intervened in the progress of religion. 5th, That, however such permission might appear to make slavery in any degree allowable to the first Hebrew Christians under the Roman government, it does not by any means make it allowable under the free government of this country, because we cannot reason from one form of government to another. 6th, That whatever may be the commercial and national advantages of slavery, (which however the Bishop does not estimate very highly: on the contrary, he strongly insists on its improvidence, and the vast superiority of free labour,) it ought not to be tolerated, because of the inadequacy of those advantages to their many bad effects and consequences. 7th, That slavery and the slave trade ought to be abolished on account of the good which would follow to religion, to mankind, and to ourselves.
We have not space to condense the whole of the Bishop’s arguments, but we shall present our readers with a few succinct notices. As for the atrocities of the African slave trade, or the cruelties of West India slavery, he says there is nothing in Scripture that is parallel to either; but he argues that “slavery itself (in every form) is inconsistent with the law of nature deducible from Scripture, and therefore with the will of God;” and that, therefore, “much more so are the cruelties of West India slavery, and the African slave trade.” Slavery, he further remarks, “even in its mildest sense, considered as unlimited, involuntary, uncompensated subjection to the service of another, is a total annihilation of all natural rights.” This forcible abduction of liberty, he contends, is inconsistent with the natural rights of society, as deducible from Scripture. In God’s first commission to man he gave him dominion over the brute creation; but there is no expression by which Adam or any of his posterity could collect that they had a right of dominion over their own species. The extent of this primary charter, remarks the Bishop, cannot be more forcibly expressed than in the language of our great poet:
O execrable son, so to aspire
Above his brother! to himself assuming
Authority usurped, from God not given.
He gave us only over beasts, flesh, fowl,
Dominion absolute. That right we hold
By his donation: but man over man
He made not lord; such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.
To those advocates of slavery who would use in its favour the golden rule of doing as we would be done by, the Bishop in reply exclaims,
“Detestable perversion ... of the most benevolent of all precepts!” Yet there is one very obvious view, he adds, in which the precept applies to the case of slavery; “for as no person would wish to be reduced to slavery or to continue so, no person whatever should reduce, a fellow-creature to slavery or keep him in that condition.” “The precept may enjoin the submission of the slave to his master, but it does not enjoin slavery: it neither makes the occasion nor justifies it. Submission is a virtue in a slave; but the exercise of this virtue neither justifies the making of slaves nor the keeping of them. Offences must come, and injustice will prevail; but woe be to them by whom the offences come! It should not be forgotten that, if the precept enjoins submission in the slave, it applies doubly to the master; for it enjoins humanity in the treatment of his slaves, AND CONDEMNS HIM FOR KEEPING THEM AT ALL.”
That the slaves are in a happier condition, and “far better off than the British peasantry,” is another old argument, which has of late been newly furbished; and the Bishop of Salisbury well replies to it, as well as to the absurd opinion, that where there is no positive physical cruelty, (and would there were nothing even of this!) there is nothing to complain of.
“If no other circumstance could be proved,” says the Bishop, “yet the mere privation of liberty, and compulsion to labour without compensation, is great cruelty and oppression. If no other fault could be alleged, the involuntary submission of so many thousands to a few individuals implies, beyond a doubt, the employment of means the most tyrannical and oppressive to secure such subjection.” “The condition of West India slaves,” he continues, “some of the apologists for slavery have endeavoured to recommend, by asserting that the slaves are happier than the poor of our own country. However inadvertently this opinion may have been admitted by many, it could have originated only from the possession of inordinate authority and insensibility to the blessings of a free country. Where the poor slaves are considered mere brutes of burden, it is no wonder that their happiness should be measured by the regular supply of mere animal subsistence. But the miseries of cold and want are light when compared with the miseries of a mind weighed down by irresistible oppression. The hardships of poverty are every day endured by thousands in this country for the sake of that liberty which the advocates of slavery think of so little value in their estimation of others’ happiness, rather than relinquish their right to their own time, their own hovel, and their own scanty property, to become the pensioners of a parish. And yet an English poor-house has advantages of indulgence and protection which are incompatible with the most humane system of West India slavery. To place the two situations of the English poor and West India slaves in any degree of comparison, is a defamation of our laws, and an insult to the genius of our country.”
The Bishop goes on to point out that “the inconsistency between slavery and the slave trade, and the general principles of our law and constitution; between the permission of such usages and our high pretensions to civil liberty; appears to furnish arguments for the abolition of slavery, not less powerful on the one hand, than the injunctions of Scripture and the rights of nature on the other.” “If slavery, however modified, is suffered to exist, British law cannot be in force. Why then attempt to modify what is in its very principle inhuman, unchristian, and inconsistent with British law, and the spirit of our constitution; and which, however its concomitant circumstances might be diminished, could never be rendered not inhuman, not unchristian, not unconstitutional? If justice to our nature, to our religion, and our country demand the sacrifice, why should an act of such accumulated duty be done by halves? Why not rather, by one generous effort of public virtue, cut off all occasion of inhumanity and oppression, with all the pernicious effects of slavery on the slave, the master, and the state?” “Even if the experience of two centuries did not forbid us to suppose that the abuses, as they are called, of slavery and the slave trade, could be effectually checked and prevented by legal authority, yet the very nature of the offence complained of resists the supposition. Oppression, cruelty, the degradation of the human species, and repugnance of the British constitution, are evils inseparable from slavery and the slave trade.”
The Bishop even apprehends injury to the mother country, by the baneful reaction of her colonial slave system. He dreads the influence of West Indian residents on their return to England. “The air even of this land of liberty,” he remarks, “may not be able to dissipate their West Indian habits of absolute dominion.”
With these views of the subject, our readers cannot wonder that the Bishop maintains, that “no British subject can be exempt from the duty of doing every thing in his power towards procuring the abolition both of West Indian slavery and the slave trade; customs in every way repugnant to religion, humanity, and freedom.” He particularly urges the subject upon his brethren of the sacred order.—The clergy, it seems, had been reproached by the West Indian party for their zealous efforts for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery.
The Bishop vindicates them; remarking, that if no British subject is “exempt from the duty of doing every thing in his power towards preventing the continuance of so great a political as well as moral evil, more especially are not those subjects whose business it is to teach what it is every man’s concern to know; the interpreters of God’s word, which is so flagrantly violated by West Indian slavery and its consequences.” “Instead of wishing to restrain the exertions of any order of men or individuals, in this cause of human nature, let us rather of all ranks, professions and persuasions unite—in the name of the common Father of mankind—in the name of Him who died to save us all—in the name of Faith, of Charity, and of Liberty, to implore those who have the power, to extirpate a system of cruelty and oppression which has been so long suffered to exist, to the dishonour of human nature, the discredit of a Christian nation, of a generous and enlightened people, and the disgrace of a free constitution!”
“Whether,” observes the good Bishop, “all the cruelties imputed to the slave trade, and to Slavery, can or cannot be substantiated; whether the cruelties complained of can be mitigated or not; the very existence of slavery, as long as it is permitted, must be a heavy reproach to this country, and a discredit to the age which can tolerate it.” “Whatever a Machiavellian in politics or commerce” may urge to the contrary, “slavery ought to be abolished, because inconsistent with the will of God.” It is not a question, he contends, to be argued merely by statesmen and publicists, but the “natural and scriptural illegality” of slavery may be judged of “on grounds infinitely superior to all commercial considerations (as much superior as the soul is to the body, as the interests of eternity are to the concerns of a day,) by every one that can feel for his fellow creatures, and can be determined by every one that can read the Scriptures.” And, adds his lordship, whatever opposition may be made by interested persons for a time, “we cannot doubt that the great principles of political justice which form the basis of our constitution, and which ought to come home to the breast of every British subject, will have their full weight in the deliberations of those august assemblies which are to decide on a cause that involves the purity of our holy religion, and the credit and consistency of our national character.”
Forty years of most opprobrious supineness and indifference have passed over our heads since the pious Bishop made this manly and forcible appeal to the national conscience. We trust, that now, in the evening of his days, he may have an opportunity of sealing, by an effective vote, the final extinction of the evil which, in earlier life, he so powerfully exposed.