[Nisbet], Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture

Richard Nisbet’s Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture was one of a relatively small number of pro-slavery publications in the colonial period. Nisbet then makes an economic case for slavery, pointing out the productivity of the sugar islands, their contribution towards imperial wealth, and the lack of a replacement or alternative labour force. The abolition of slavery would, he suggests, fundamentally weaken the empire and encourage France to attempt to regain the losses sustained during the French and Indian war. The mutilation and murder of slaves would be a destruction of their own property, and hardly a sensible step for a slaveholder. Laws that seem harsh ‘at first sight’ were rarely used, he claims, and only there for emergencies. The debate between Rush and Nisbet presaged by more than seventy years the publications by abolitionists and pro-slavery writers in the nineteenth century.