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1822 April 12
Letter 16. By relinquishment, Spain will clear her morals
and reputation from the taint of the Slave trade
and Slaveholding Slave-buying and Slave-holding, bell-Stains expunged.
Spaniards!
Yes: I have, (you see) this other honor for you:
yes: and this too without cost. You will cleanse cleanse yourselves of this
foulest of all political and moral leprosies. Yes, and not You will become clean;
and, to your being so, not so much as the trouble of a dip into a river will be requisite.
And Happily, so it is - that, in your Peninsula, no man either buys Slaves
or keeps Slaves: if to any Peninsular Spaniard it happens,
to defile himself with these abominations, he is lives out of the
country, or at any rate sends his money out of it. and and in doing so with his money, is not seen or known to do what he does. True,
it may perhaps be said, morality will so far be preserved
inviolate, conscience unwounded, dishonor escaped: but
still no honor, no positive honor, gained.
Oh but indeed there will be. True it is, in
itself the honor is but negative: but thanks to comparison
and contrast, thanks to the dishonor that you
will leave elsewhere, this honour of yours will be positive
.
Washing your hands and keeping them clean of this
stain, you will take your station above France, you will
place yourselves take your station above England: Above England did I say? Yes, in this scale of honor,
scale of honor, you will place yourselves even above the Anglo-American
United States: that nation whose place is, in so
many other scales, so much above that of every other.
To be above France - above her in that degraded state
from which it is hoped let us hope she is emerging, is alas! but little:
placing yourselfselves above her, you might still be in
the mire: that the aggregate of despostic abracity may
be sereved up to its maximum, — murder, and oppression,
and depredation, in this their most aggravated
shape if so many accounts as an continually in all us, are not merely connived at but encouraged:
encouraged with a degree of enjoyment to which perfidy,
by violation of one of the few treaties, which have
ever had beneficence for their object, gives a zest.
It is of slave-buying you will understand
me to be now speaking in the first place: not as
yet of slave-holding: for, wide indeed is the difference
between the plunging men into that sad condition,
and
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Identifier: | JB/008/131/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 8. |
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rid yourselves of ultramaria |
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131 |
rid yourselves |
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john flowerdew colls |
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[[notes_public::"revised / 21 april 1822 j. be. to j. bo. this may go to spain: but must not now (you will i believe think) to portugal certainly not" [notes in bentham's hand]]] |
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