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.