An Essay on the Slavery & Commerce of the Human Species
Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) — the young Cambridge scholar whose prize essay grew into a lifetime of abolitionist labor — sets forth in three parts the historical, philosophical, and moral case against the slavery and commerce of the human species. A modern English edition with linked scripture and historical references.
- The 1786 essay that helped ignite the British campaign to abolish the slave trade
- Traces the history of slavery from antiquity to the African trade and colonial plantation
- EPUB format
Secure checkout by Stripe · Instant EPUB download · 7-day money-back guarantee
Free Original Project GutenbergAbout This Edition
Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) was the most tireless investigator the abolitionist movement ever produced. In 1785, as a Cambridge undergraduate, he entered and won the university’s Latin essay competition on the question whether it is lawful to make slaves of others against their will. On the ride back to London, he was overtaken by the conviction that if the things he had written were true it was time some person should see these calamities to their end. He translated the essay into English at the urging of Anthony Benezet’s Quaker friends in London, expanded it with fresh evidence, and published it in 1786 through the Quaker printer James Phillips. Within a year it had drawn Wilberforce, Sharp, and the London Friends into a common cause, and Clarkson had begun the traveling — some thirty-five thousand miles by his own count — that would gather the parliamentary case against the trade.
An Essay on the Slavery & Commerce of the Human Species is the founding document of that campaign. In three parts Clarkson traces the whole subject: the ancient trade in slaves from war, piracy, and hereditary bondage; the modern African commerce, in which European merchants set petty kings against one another for slaves; and the treatment inflicted on the enslaved in the colonies, from the middle passage through the seasoning to the discipline of the plantations. To this he adds a patient refutation of every argument then offered in defense of the trade — from purchase, from genius, from color, from the alleged improvement of the African’s condition — and closes with a final appeal to the conscience of Britain.
Running through the whole is Clarkson’s conviction that no purchase, no custom, and no long acquiescence can constitute a right to the liberties of another. This Friends Illuminated edition presents his text in lightly modernized English, with the plain speech of the eighteenth century preserved where the argument requires it, and scripture, classical sources, and historical references linked throughout.