ABSTRACT
The law underwent significant changes in eighteenth-century Britain. Although these changes resulted in an expansion of rights and freedoms for some British subjects, the liberalization of the law was far from complete. This chapter considers how writers working in a range of genres revealed the limits of the law, focusing on debates about the nature and ends of criminal justice, the legal regulation of marriage, and the legality of slavery and the slave trade. In different ways and to different degrees, the chapter shows, writers challenged and reimagined the inequalities inscribed in and fostered by the legal system.
