ABSTRACT
TO what extent was it possible, or even advisable, to continue the national effort to suppress the foreign Slave Trade? After thirty years’ experience, opinion on the matter in this country was divided in an extraordinary way in the middle of the eighteen-forties. How complicated that division of opinion was may be judged by the paradox that Palmerston, Russell and the Whigs, who had traditionally supported the cause of abolition, and who were at that moment negotiating fresh treaties with other countries to suppress slavery, were now encouraging the cultivation of slave-grown sugar. Again, at the very time when enthusiastic naval officers were formulating more effective plans to abolish the trade, the use of force, however high the motives, was being deprecated by the Quakers composing the Anti-Slavery Society. Never was the pacifist's dilemma presented more sharply than in this choice of having to support either slavers or sailors! A link between them and their more important Free Trade allies was John Bright, who, in his devotion to both pacifism and laissez faire, succeeded in overlooking the notorious fact that most of the goods by which the Slave Trade was fed were produced in Manchester.
