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

by William Wilberforce

With respect to the African branch of the foregoing statement, all who believe with me, that the Africans are not incapable of civilization, and that when the fatal barrier shall be broken down, which along the whole western frontier has shut out all the improvements to be derived from a bloodless intercourse with more polished nations, they may gradually advance to a state of social order, comfort, and abundance; all who entertain hopes like these, will anticipate the immense amount of the commercial transactions which Britons in future times may carry on with that vast continent; and surely our descendants will, at the same time, wonder that their forefathers, on principles even of mere commercial gain, could be blind to the advantages to be derived from diffusing our manufactures through a region which constitutes almost a third part of the habitable globe.

Even our opponents themselves will acknowledge, that the suddenness of the shock is alone to be regarded. The objection on this ground was quite satisfactorily, though briefly refuted, in the concise statement formerly referred to. It appears, that, even before the abolition of that large part of the Slave Trade which consisted in supplying foreigners, and the French and Dutch conquered settlements with Slaves; the capital employed in the Slave Trade was but about one thirty-fifth part of the whole of our capital employed in foreign trade; and it was very truly affirmed, that “very few changes ever take place in the political arrangements of the state, or in its measures of commercial œconomy, which are not attended with a much greater shifting of capital, than the abolition of the Slave Trade, however sudden, could have effected in the periods of its greatest prosperity.”

The assertion, that we should be injured by suddenly throwing out of occupation the ships and seamen employed in the African Trade, was shewn to stand on still weaker grounds. When at its very highest amount, an amount far higher than it will ever again reach, unless we even replace the branches which we have actually lopped off, it employed not one-sixtieth part of our whole tonnage; not one twenty-third part of our seamen. But so far as our seamen are in consideration, it will scarcely be disputed by any Naval Officer, that we should gain by the extinction of the Slave Trade.

With respect to the West Indian part of the price, as calculated by our opponents, which Great Britain must pay for obeying the dictates of justice and humanity, by abolishing the Slave Trade; we must remark, that they forget that the revenue at least, derived from the taxes raised on West Indian productions, is paid by the subjects of this country. Other objections of detail might be made to their calculations. But, passing by these, let me observe, that, above all, they utterly forget, that in this reasoning they take for granted the whole question in dispute; for the Abolitionists maintain, that, while the abolition would produce a gradual increase of our exports to the West Indies, from the improving condition of the bulk of their population; our revenue, our imports, and our marine, dependent on them, would be fixed on a basis far more safe and durable than that on which they now rest. But in considering the question on the grounds of policy, it is ever to be kept in mind, that the alternative is not, whether or not we shall take a step which is affirmed, on one side, to be big with mischief, while the opponents only maintain, on the other, that it will be productive of no injury. It is, whether we shall take a step, which may perhaps produce some slight inconveniencies, or whether we shall subject ourselves, by refusing to take it, to great and inevitable calamities. The West Indian proprietors who are friends of the Slave Trade cannot be more positive that its termination will be injurious to their interests, than the Abolitionists are, that its continuance is every moment threatening them with ruin.

But when the Colonists tell us that the system which we recommend to them, would be injurious to their own and the national welfare, in opposition to the repeatedly avowed opinions of those great statesmen, in the sense of national interest entertained by the one or by the other of whom they have all, in every other instance, concurred; are we not also entitled to say, that their system has at least had a full and fair trial, and that the issue of this experiment has been to bring our old colonies in general into such an extremity of distress and embarrassment, as even the realizing of the utmost apprehensions which our opponents have entertained from the abolition could scarcely exceed?

Present West Indian System ruinous.

Here again an immense field opens to our view. But I must take a most hasty survey of it; otherwise it would be no difficult task to prove, that the Slave Trade, and the system of management with which it is intimately associated, has, in various ways, tended to this unprosperous issue. The eyes of the public have been dazzled by the sight of some splendid fortunes, which, it is understood, have been rapidly acquired; while the liberal, not to say profuse, tempers and habits of the West Indian gentlemen, tempers and habits naturally generated by a system of slavery, as well as by a tropical climate, and which are powerfully promoted by the prodigious variations in the annual returns of their estates, tend to keep up the delusion.

But West Indian speculations, which have often been called a lottery, are, like the lottery, on the whole a very losing game. This will be the more readily assented to, when it is stated, that in Jamaica, by far the largest of our colonies, taking the whole island together, the planters capital, as was stated in 1789 to the Privy Council, by a Committee of the Council of the island, does not yield more than about 4 per cent.; and this, it is to be observed, is not obtained by all adventurers in about an equal proportion; but as some derive great gains, others are proportionably losers. In some few of the smaller islands, the profit on the capital was stated to be somewhat, but only a little more.

The facility of purchasing labourers afforded by the Slave Trade has tempted multitudes to their ruin. Sometimes a great number of Slaves, for which no adequate preparations were made, have been put to the most unhealthy and laborious of all employments, the clearing of new land, and forming of new settlements. Accordingly, it has followed for the most part but too naturally, that the Slaves have perished, and the estate has been either thrown up, or sold for the benefit of the creditors.

These are no new speculations. Mr. Long, above thirty years ago, dilated on the evils of this system in the strongest terms. He even went so far as to recommend, with a view to the prevention of them, a temporary stoppage of the importation of Slaves from Africa; and he confirmed his reasoning by appealing to the experience of one of our North American colonies, which, when involved in the deepest distress by the operation of similar circumstances, had been retrieved from a state of almost utter ruin by the adoption of a similar expedient.