Proslavery Politics after Abolition

Abstract

In 1823, the Houses of Parliament channeled popular anti-slavery sentiment into a number of proposed plans for amelioration (both as a means of eventually achieving emancipation and as an individual goal). On May 15, William Wilberforce spoke to the Commons following the presentation of two plans for amelioration. Charles Rose Ellis then rose to speak “on behalf of the planters of the West Indies, and as one of that body” but clarified that he should not be seen as a “champion of slavery”:

As a West-India planter, I do not hold myself in any degree responsible for the establishment of the system. The planters of the present generation, most of them at least, found themselves, by inheritance, or by other accidental causes, in possession of property the fruit of the industry of their ancestors or other predecessors, and of capital vested in the West Indies by them, under the sanction of the government and of the parliament of this country, through their encouragement and in reliance on their good faith.¹