A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade / Addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of Yorkshire

by William Wilberforce

Waste of labour wherever slavery prevails.

It is proved by indisputable reasoning, as well as by uniform experience, that where slavery exists, there is always an immense waste of labour; there is a tendency to accomplish, by mere force, all which is elsewhere effected by machinery. How far this has been the case in the West Indies, is pointed out by various authors, and particularly with great ability, and perfect knowledge of the subject, by a late writer.[^[44]]

In order, therefore, to form a just estimate of the means of cultivating the West Indies, after the abolition shall have taken place, we must superadd, to a population gradually increasing, and advancing so much the more rapidly from the removal of the obstacles to breeding, and the positive causes of increase which have been already stated, that great and incalculable increase in the efficiency of the force actually employed, which will be effected by its becoming the immediate and pressing interest of the proprietors to economise in the labour of their Slaves, and to avail themselves of all the means by which labour may be abridged, and the same produce may be raised by fewer hands.

Immediate abolition preferable to gradual, both in the West Indies and in Africa.

Allow me also to remark that, now especially, when the planters have had so much time, since the first proposal of abolition, for filling up their gangs, the change is likely to operate more favourably on both sides of the Atlantic, in consequence of it’s being immediate and complete, not gradual in it’s operation. In the West Indies, where there is to be a great change of practical views and objects, a change too which will be very unwillingly adopted, men are far more likely to make up their minds to the new system, and to set about acting upon it with vigour, if it be clearly and decisively necessary, than if there be still some supply, though in a diminished proportion, to be obtained from the Slave market. Supposing them in the first year to fail in their endeavours to obtain a share of the Slaves allowed to be imported, they may hope to be more fortunate in the second. Meanwhile the hope of a resource in the Slave market will prevent their exerting themselves in earnest in establishing the system by which they might secure an internal increase; and thus they might be drawn on from year to year to their own ruin, to the public injury, and to the misery of their unhappy Negroes.

Again, in Africa, were we at once to give up the Slave Trade, the native chiefs and factors, who have hitherto entirely depended on it for their supply of spirits, fire-arms, ammunition, and other European articles, having no resource in their old occupation, would set themselves in earnest to some other mode of employing their domestic Slaves, in order thereby to procure the desired stock of European articles. But were the trade to be abolished by degrees, they, as in the former case, would hope to obtain a share, though it should be a smaller share; and this expectation would be sufficient to prevent their engaging spiritedly in any undertaking of agriculture or commerce.

It may seem to be anticipating an argument which ought to receive a separate consideration; but let me also remark, that our retiring gradually from the trade, would greatly favour the entrance of other nations into the post we had before occupied. It would be utterly impossible for them to find capital or other means sufficient for undertaking the whole of so extensive a commerce; but were we to give it up by degrees, they might possibly be able, by great efforts, to obtain the means of carrying on, part after part, what we should have abandoned.

Abolitionists falsely deemed inconsistent for not emancipating the West Indian Slaves.

And here, perhaps, it may be right to answer a strange objection, which our opponents, at a loss, surely, for sound arguments, have urged against us. I may be able also at once to vindicate the Abolitionists from two opposite charges, which have been brought against them. One class of their opponents, in spite of repeated and most positive assurances to the contrary, have imputed to them the design of immediately emancipating the Slaves. Can it be necessary to declare, that the Abolitionists are full as much as any other men convinced, that insanity alone could dictate such a project. On the other hand, by another class of opponents, they have been charged with being unfaithful to their own principles, in not immediately emancipating the Slaves already in the islands, as well as immediately putting a stop to our ravages in Africa. Sometimes it has been argued, that we ourselves prove by our conduct in this instance, that the laws of justice must occasionally concede somewhat to considerations of expediency. That therefore they do but extend a little further than we, the limits of that concession, when they propose that the Slave Trade itself, with all its horrors, should be suffered to continue.

It scarcely would be requisite to expose the sophistry of this argument, if it had not sometimes proceeded from men of understanding, whose use of it however can only be accounted for by the supposition, that they are utterly unacquainted with the circumstances of the case.