Jeremy Bentham relates a number of “abominations” to the French National Convention urging them to emancipate their colonies (1793)
About this Quotation:
Jeremy Bentham was forever petitioning governments and well-connected people to adopt his reform proposals, whether they were for prison reform, the colonisation of Australia, or the independence of France’s colonies. It is hard to tell what the French politicians thought of this tirade but it is amusing to read. Bentham has a strong dislike of the aristocrats in England and France who monopolised politics and cloaks his arguments in a thinly disguised theory of class (a view also adopted by his followers James Mill and other members of the Philosophic radicals). Abominations are not just abominations, but “aristocratical abominations”. I guess they don’t get much worse than that in his view.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2009: Edward Gibbon called the loss of independence and excessive obedience the "secret poison" which corrupted the Roman Empire (1776)
- 2008: Thomas Hodgskin wonders how despotism comes to a country and concludes that the “first step” taken towards despotism gives it the power to take a second and a third - hence it must be stopped in its tracks at the very first sign (1813)
- 2007: David Hume on the origin of government in warfare, and the “perpetual struggle” between Liberty and Power (1777)
- 2004: Bernhard Knollenberg on the Belief of many colonial Americans that Liberty was lost because the Leaders of the People had failed in their Duty (2003)
Other quotes about Colonies, Slavery & Abolition:
- 2009: Frederick Douglass makes a New Year’s resolution to gain his freedom from slavery (1836)
- 2009: Emerson on the right of self-ownership of slaves to themselves and to their labor (1863)
- 2009: Sir William Blackstone declares unequivocally that slavery is “repugnant to reason, and the principles of natural law” and that it has no place in English law (1753)
- 2008: Harriet Martineau on the institution of slavery, “restless slaves”, and the Bill of Rights (1838)
- 2007: John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion (1866)
- 2007: The ex-slave Frederick Douglass reveals that reading speeches by English politicians produced in him a deep love of liberty and hatred of oppression (1882)
- 2007: Thomas Clarkson on the “glorious” victory of the abolition of the slave trade in England (1808)
- 2007: Jean-Baptiste Say argues that home-consumers bear the brunt of the cost of maintaining overseas colonies and that they also help support the lavish lifestyles of the planter and merchant classes (1817)
- 2007: J.B. Say argues that colonial slave labor is really quite profitable for the slave owners at the expense of the slaves and the home consumers (1817)
- 2006: John Millar argues that as a society becomes wealthier domestic freedom increases, even to the point where slavery is thought to be pernicious and economically inefficient (1771)
- 2006: Adam Smith notes that colonial governments might exercise relative freedom in the metropolis but impose tyranny in the distant provinces (1776)
- 2005: Less well known is Thomas Jefferson’s First Draft of the Declaration of Independence in which he denounced the slave trade as an “execrable Commerce” and slavery itself as a “cruel war against nature itself” (1776)
6 August, 2007
 | Jeremy Bentham relates a number of “abominations” to the French National Convention urging them to emancipate their colonies (1793) |
In an address to the French National Convetion in 1793 Jeremy Bentham urged the delegates to emancipate the colonies from French rule. He particularly denounced the policy of the government monopolizing the sugar trade:
The attempt, I say, is iniquitous: it is an aristocratical abomination: it is a cluster of aristocratical abominations: it is iniquitous towards them; but much more as among yourselves.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
The attempt, I say, is iniquitous: it is an aristocratical abomination: it is a cluster of aristocratical abominations: it is iniquitous towards them; but much more as among yourselves.
Abomination the 1st. Liberty, property, and equality violated on the part of a large class of citizens (the colonists) by preventing them from carrying their goods to the markets which it is supposed would be most advantageous to them, and thence keeping from them so much as it is supposed they would otherwise acquire.
Abomination 2d. One part of a nation (the people of France) taxed to raise money to maintain by force the restraints so imposed upon another part of the nation (the colonists.)
Abomination 3d. The poor, who after all are unable to buy sugar—the poor in France, taxed in order to pay the rich for eating it. Necessaries abridged for the support of luxury. The burthen falls upon the rich and poor in common: the benefit is shared exclusively by the rich.