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1821 July 24
Rid Yourselves
Lett. Relinquishmt honorable
No Slave Trade
12.
Say not such self-denial
as is recommended is too
high for human nature.
More than this, even as
applied to slave-buying
and slave-holding, has
been perseveringly practised
in U.S.
(☞. Insert the proofs from
Miss Wright: and the originals?)
13.
Note the difference between
Slave-buying and Slave-holding:
thence, between
forcing emancipation
and forcing cessation of
purchase.
By forced emancipation,
neither would Slave-holders,
nor now Slave holders,
nor slaves themselves, be
benefited.
14.
Retaining dominion or
claim, this moral leprosy
cleaved to you: ridding
yourselves of the once; you
do of the other.
15.
No otherwise could you
rid yourselves of the moral
stain: if not by any
thing else, by your determination
to crush the Slave
trade, they would be determined
to shake you
off.
Then would come the
plea of necessity: necessity
to keep this use: otherwise,
our subjects would no longer
be so: and thus the
constitution we have
sworn to observe would be
violated.
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Letter Relinquishmt honorable
16.
Impossibilities seem to
be performed by swearing
to observe the Constitution.
In Article 4, Nation obliged
to preserve and protect
the civil liberty of all the
individuals. Negroes – are
not they individuals?
when they cease to be individuals
you your rulers will cease to
have guaranteed their "civil
liberty": your rulers will cease to be tyrants &
hypocrites; those who call
you so will begin to be calumniators.
17.
If under your rulers the condition of your
Negroes under you is civil
liberty, say to them go to Negroland
choose each of you a master there and you may secure it,
without the complication
of Codes made only to be
neglected or violated.
18.
No otherwise can you
be objects of respect and
sympathy, to all English,
to honest French, and particularly
to U.S. whose
place is above both.
Painful to me the reproaches,
that, but for you, and
another nation, this reproach
to christianity
would long have been
washed out. What can I
say to them?
19.
Of French I say honest.
For, to those who have
vowed to enslave their
own countrymen, limits
to slavery are intolerable.
But to them no inconsistency
or hyprocrisy can, on this
score,
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Lett. Relinquishmt honorable
19 Contind.
score, be imputed. They
have not sworn to take
for their object greatest
happiness &c – to preserve
civil liberty to all individuals. To them, proper object
is happiness of one
and others to whom it pleases
him to impart the
means. To these men, with
whom you thus hold community
of principle, feeling
and endeavour, you
are rebels whom they wd.
delight to see punished
as such.
20.
If honour be what you
wish for, there it is at
your command, and of
the purest and most exalted kind.
21.
By the same means, you
will rid yourselves of
slave-holding: thus placing
yourselves above England,
France and even
U.S. For, though so unwillingly
still are U.S. slave-holders.
For at any rate
you mean not to import
Negroes to keep them
serving as Slaves in your
house or fields: Only because,
if you did not suffer Ultramarians
so to keep
them, they would not be
your subjects, do you, in
breach of your Code, suffer
it.
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Identifier: | JB/008/109/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 8.
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1821-07-24 |
12-21 |
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008 |
rid yourselves of ultramaria |
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109 |
rid yourselves |
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001 |
lett. relinquishmt honorable / no slave trade |
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marginal summary sheet |
1 |
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recto |
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john flowerdew colls |
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3213 |
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