sailingaway
03-03-2013, 01:31 PM
Was it immoral to compensate slave-owners at the time of emancipation? That is the implication of most of the media comment that has followed the publication of a study of the records by UCL, showing that several prominent British families received vast cash payments. The Independent on Sunday calls it 'Britain's colonial shame'. Trevor Philips has thinks it 'the most profound injustice that probably you can identify anywhere in this country's history'.
I can't for the life of me see why. The fact that people were prepared to pay to abolish the monstrosity of slavery is surely a cause for satisfaction rather than shame. It is one thing to say, in the abstract, 'slavery is a bad idea'; quite another to say, 'slavery is so wicked that I am prepared to make a personal sacrifice to help do away with it'.
When, decades later, the United States got around to emancipation, no compensation was paid. Instead, a terrible war was fought, whose legacy of racial bitterness endured for another century and more. Yet, when Ron Paul suggested that it might have been better for everyone had the Americans adopted the British approach, buying out the slave-owners peacefully, he was pilloried.
It is true that, with a handful of exceptions, the slaves themselves received no compensation. This was a terrible wrong. But that wrong doesn't invalidate the policy of purchased manumission. Britain was not just the first major power to abolish slavery. It then poured its energies into a campaign to extirpate the trade around the world – a campaign from which it derived no gain.
more: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100205063/the-fact-that-we-paid-to-abolish-slavery-should-be-a-cause-for-pride-not-shame/
I can't for the life of me see why. The fact that people were prepared to pay to abolish the monstrosity of slavery is surely a cause for satisfaction rather than shame. It is one thing to say, in the abstract, 'slavery is a bad idea'; quite another to say, 'slavery is so wicked that I am prepared to make a personal sacrifice to help do away with it'.
When, decades later, the United States got around to emancipation, no compensation was paid. Instead, a terrible war was fought, whose legacy of racial bitterness endured for another century and more. Yet, when Ron Paul suggested that it might have been better for everyone had the Americans adopted the British approach, buying out the slave-owners peacefully, he was pilloried.
It is true that, with a handful of exceptions, the slaves themselves received no compensation. This was a terrible wrong. But that wrong doesn't invalidate the policy of purchased manumission. Britain was not just the first major power to abolish slavery. It then poured its energies into a campaign to extirpate the trade around the world – a campaign from which it derived no gain.
more: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100205063/the-fact-that-we-paid-to-abolish-slavery-should-be-a-cause-for-pride-not-shame/