Nevertheless, their attachment to abolition was not merely instrumental; there was a strong empathic motivation: “their horror at the trafficking and enslavement of human bodies was genuine”[847]—a judgment that certainly leaps out at anyone reading Ramsey’s essay.
Methodists
The explosion of ‘New Dissent’ (especially Methodism) from the 1770s to the 1840s marked one of the most dramatic social and cultural changes in the country’s history. … Methodism was the only denomination that positively thrived on socio-economic change—including population growth, industrialization, migration, and social mobility. So, in its various forms, it became the most powerful catalyst of cultural dissidence in England. Chapels and their Sunday schools, often staffed by self-taught artisans and miners, became a channel of revolt against squire and parson.[848]
During this period, Methodists were Evangelicals who opposed slavery but operated outside the Church of England. Founded in 1739, Methodism was very much in tune with the emphasis on a universal moral sense: “While the philosophers were invoking the moral sense as the basis of the social affections, Methodist preachers were giving practical effect to that idea by spreading a religious gospel of good works, engaging in a variety of humanitarian causes, and welcoming the poor into their fold.”[849]
Although the emphasis was upon the personal giving of charity and good works, the Methodists helped establish and support philanthropic enterprises and institutions of every kind: hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages, friendly societies, schools and libraries. They also played a prominent part in the movement for the abolition of the slave trade. Wesley himself was passionate on the subject of ‘that execrable villainy,’ slavery. ‘An African … was in no respect inferior to the European’; if he seemed so, it was because the European had kept him in a condition of inferiority, depriving him of ‘all opportunities of improving either in knowledge or virtue.’[850]
In a letter to William Wilberforce, the parliamentary leader of the abolitionists, Wesley wrote, “Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”[851] According to Wesley, if the empire required slavery, it would have to be renounced[852]—an excellent example of abolitionism’s lack of concern for individual or national interests.
Although they were involved in petitioning Parliament,[853] the Methodists were not at the center of the activist movements. Nevertheless, their position was clear. In 1774 Wesley published an antislavery tract titled Thoughts upon Slavery containing stark descriptions of the recruitment of slaves and their treatment during the passage to the West Indies and on sugar plantations:
And what can be more wretched than the condition they enter upon? Banished from their country, from their relations and friends forever, they are reduced to a state scarce any way preferable to that of beasts of burden. … Their sleep is short, their labor continual and frequently above their strength: so death sets many at liberty before half their days. … They are whipped by overseers who, if they think them dilatory, or think any thing not so well done as it should be, whip them most unmercifully, so that you may see their bodies long after wheal’d and scarred usually from the shoulders to the waist. … As to the punishment inflicted on them, says Sir Hans Sloan, “they frequently geld them or chop off half a foot: after they are whipped until they are raw all over. Some put pepper and salt all over them. Some drop melted wax upon their skin. Others cut off their ears and constrain them to broil and eat them. For Rebellion” (that is, asserting their native Liberty which they have as much right to as the Air they breathe) “they fasten them down to the ground with crooked sticks on every limb, and then applying fire by degrees, to the feet and hands, they burn them gradually upward to the head.”[854]
Whether or not such practices occurred or were common, passages like this were clearly intended to evoke empathy and disgust in readers.
Methodism had a well-developed emphasis on altruism. Any wealth beyond the necessities to rear a family should be given to the poor and it should be done, according to Wesley, in “as secret and unostentatious way as possible.”[855] This effectively de-emphasized personal reputation as a motive for charity. The Methodists tended to avoid organized approaches to charity in favor of individual action.
A disposition rather than an organisation for philanthropy was thus established, which explains in great part, the generous support of members of the Methodist Connection for the amelioration of human distress, whether that of poverty, or sickness, or imprisonment, or slavery; it explains too the lack of organised effort in tackling any of the leading social problems of the age.[856]
The artistic production of Methodism emphasized moral virtue. “The Methodists published sentimental novels and poems … , as well as sermons and tracts. And theology had at its core feelings, sentiments, and emotions that were given expression in prayers, hymns, homilies, and, not least, in personal services for the sick and needy.”[857]
Like the Quakers and the Evangelical Anglicans, there was a strong streak of egalitarianism in Methodism. Although loyal to established hierarchy, within the church “the movement was, in spirit if not formally, democratic. … Within the church, there were few social distinctions. … And the organizational structure, however hierarchical, promoted a spirit of community and fraternity.”[858] Women were often the majority in congregations, and they played a major role in leading “in prayer, counseling, and exhorting.”[859] There were many female preachers with the same status as men. Methodism encouraged a Puritan-like ethic of thrift, diligence and hard work along with “the social obligation of charity and good works, so it made ‘self-help’ a correlative of helping others.”[860] Methodism appealed “to the middle classes; it remained allied with Evangelicalism which “would inspire the ‘Moral Reformation’ and philanthropic movements that were so distinctive a part of the British Enlightenment.”[861]
Puritanism as a Prototype of “The Age of
Benevolence”
Mary Gwladys Jones’s The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Puritanism in Action describes the Puritan roots of the eighteenth-century “age of benevolence.”[862] This is important for the present discussion because, although Puritans per se were not at the forefront of the movement to abolish slavery, Jones’s work clearly shows that the Puritan ethic described in Chapter 6 was at the root of what she describes as the eighteenth century’s “sustained humanitarianism and generous philanthropy.”[863] This included concern for African slaves:
The call of the mission field abroad, the distress of religious refugees, the misery of negro slaves, foundling children and climbing boys, the brutalities of the criminal law, the hardships of the very poor, the aged and infirm, the struggle of the “second poor” [i.e., poor people not in receipt of parish relief] to keep their heads above water, the suffering of the sick and diseased, of those in prison never failed to stir the consciences and untie the purse-strings of the pious and philanthropic men and women of eighteenth-century England.[864]
In linking these tendencies to Puritanism, Jones is implying not allegiance to any particular religious dogma, but an effort “to live their lives in punctilious conformity to Christian teaching.” Such people could be found in all the religious sects, including the Church of England. “They were united not by a specific form of Church constitution, but by a pietism, or precisianism, which aimed at promoting by an austere personal discipline the glory of God and the inner sanctification of the individual.”[865] Their motivation was “spiritual rewards in the world to come.”[866] The sensibility of the Evangelicals of the eighteenth century thus represented the characteristics of what she terms “classical Puritanism.”[867] “The steady, unswerving practice of piety and charity remained their dominant characteristics.”
“The Second British Empire” in the Nineteenth Century: A Kinder, Gentler Place
The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica and Its
Suppor
ters in England
The movement to end slavery was only a part of the overall movement toward a society with a greater role for empathy, fairness, and “high-mindedness”—characterized by strong moral principles. This high-mindedness of an important segment of British society was on display in the reaction to the Morant Bay Rebellion of Black Jamaicans carried out against Whites in 1865 in Jamaica, as discussed by Andrew Joyce.[868]
In thinking about the context of the rebellion, the abolition of slavery in Jamaica certainly did not end racial tensions. Slavery ended in 1833 and by 1838 workers were hired at market wages with the result that poverty ensued for many amid complaints of worker indolence by the planters; sugar production dropped significantly. The situation in Jamaica had critical differences from the high-mindedness of the British settlers in New Zealand during around the same time (see below). Unlike New Zealand, Jamaica had a long history of using African slaves to work on large plantations beginning in the late seventeenth century. A race realist perspective emphasizes the low average IQ of the Africans along with poor impulse control and poor work ethic. Joyce cites Lawrence James, a well-recognized historian of the British Empire who noted that many Blacks refused to work on the plantations after a free market in labor was established on the island. The result was that planters resorted to importing workers from India and China to work on the plantations.
Unsurprisingly from a race realist perspective, the descendants of these Asian workers have become prominent in the mercantile class on the island, rising to a position that is unquestionably above the Blacks.[869] In recent times, this has resulted in ethnic tensions, with the Chinese in particular becoming the target of hostility by poor Jamaican Blacks. Anti-Chinese riots during the 1970s resulted in large-scale emigration from the island. A revealing comment on the work ethic of Jamaican Blacks is that when Chinese entrepreneurs opened textile factories on Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s, they brought with them laborers from China.
These tensions have not disappeared: despite continuing to dominate the economy, some Chinese are leaving Jamaica because of anti-Chinese attitudes and widespread crime.[870] As an article on social stratification in contemporary Jamaica notes, “the bulk of national wealth is owned by a small number of light-skinned or white families, with a significant portion controlled by individuals of Chinese and Middle Eastern heritage.”[871] Moreover, African ancestry is “still associated with being ‘uncivilized,’ ‘ignorant,’ ‘lazy,’ and ‘untrustworthy.’” These stereotypes of Jamaican Blacks are similar to those of Blacks in other countries, and fit well with race realist research.[872] These findings place the difficulties faced by the Jamaican authorities in 1865 in context.
The reaction of the Governor of Jamaica, John Eyre, to the rebellion did not reflect the “kinder and gentler” Second British Empire described below as applicable to New Zealand. The rebels had killed police officers and, after storming a courthouse, the White victims of the mob were killed “under circumstances of great atrocity,”[873] such as cutting off tongues and fingers while still alive. Governor Eyre called out reinforcements from the Royal Navy which restored order after killing several hundred rebels, including the leader Paul Bogle and his brothers. George William Gordon, a wealthy mixed-race individual who was a member of the Jamaican parliament, was executed for complicity and later became the subject of glowing hagiographies devoid of historical accuracy among the critics of the government’s response to the rebellion.
However, the reaction of certain segments of British society certainly reflected the theme of a kinder and gentler British Empire. Joyce’s article shows that the sentiments that drove the antislavery movement in England were prominent and powerful in the England of the 1860s:
To the clear-thinking individual, it was a plainly criminal and unimaginably brutal series of actions, carried out for malicious reasons against a population targeted for being White. And yet, there was a liberal faction in England convinced not only that it was the Black population that were the true victims, but also that their fellow Whites were reprehensible monsters who deserved the fate which befell them. This pathological response, laden with a misplaced hyper-emotionality, would shake the Empire to its core, sapping its confidence and bequeathing a legacy which is still felt to this day.[874]
Opinion on the Empire in the 1860s was sharply divided, with the liberal critics centering around an informal group called Exeter Hall composed of wealthy individuals with access to the burgeoning newspaper-based media of the period. They were identified in the public mind “with what Charles Dickens described as “platform sympathy for the Black and ... platform indifference to our own countrymen.”[875] Dickens’ comments, written in 1865, are interesting because they reflect liberal thinking in contemporary times—concern about helping poor people in far off places by promoting immigration regardless of negative effects on large segments of the native population, particularly the working class. Dickens:
The Jamaica insurrection is another hopeful piece of business. That platform sympathy with the Black—or the Native, or the Devil—afar off, and that platform indifference to our own countrymen at enormous odds in the midst of bloodshed and savagery makes me stark wild. Only the other day, there was a meeting of jawbones of asses at Manchester, to censure the Jamaica Governor [Eyre] for his manner of putting down the insurrection! So we are badgered about New Zealanders [Maoris] and Hottentots, as if they were identical with men in clean shirts at Camberwell, and were to be bound by pen and ink accordingly! So Exeter Hall holds us in perfect mortal submission to missionaries who (Livingston always excepted) are perfect nuisances, and always leave every place worse off than they found it. … But for the blacks in Jamaica being over-impatient and before their time, the whites would have been exterminated.[876]
Reflecting the sentiments of many proponents of the antislavery movement earlier in the century, the Exeter Hall coterie were “Christian philanthropists who believed that [the] races could be raised to standards of education and conduct which would place them alongside Europeans. Members of this group tended to be Non-Conformist, middle-class, and liberal or radical in their politics.”[877] As Joyce notes, “Exeter Hall was largely responsible for the production and dissemination of a range of antislavery and pro-Black propaganda [replete with exaggerations, omissions, and willful rewriting of historical events] which, with its heady emotional characteristics, thrived on those under the influence of the Romantic movement.”[878]
As with several of the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists and religious leaders discussed in Chapter 6, their views were influenced by the belief that racial characteristics were mutable, and in particular that converting Africans would make them part of the Christian ethnos. As noted there, these ideas are a Christian version of the optimistic, utopian ideas based on Lamarckian ideas of the heritability of acquired characteristics. Within Lamarckian ideology, races could be changed by acquiring British or American culture, so that they would eventually become “just like us”—the conflation of race and culture.
Given the powerful role of Jewish academics in contemporary Western culture, it’s also worth noting Jewish aspects of the rebellion and how they were perceived in contemporary times. Joyce cites a first-hand account by a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1871.[879] Besides noting the inaccuracies surrounding many accounts of the rebellion and the unwillingness of Blacks to work, this individual
shed light on the activities of Jamaica’s miniscule but increasingly powerful Jewish community. Crippled further by a decrease in the price of sugar, White landowners “threw their estates into the market.” The island’s resources thus began to fall “into the hands of the Jews, who became rich and prosperous, and in conjunction with petty lawyers who had fattened on the charges for drawing legal documents, and the exorbitant interest on the loans contracted by a number of landowners anxious to save themselves from utter ruin, forced their way into the House of Assembly, where they soon became supreme, and used their power
to procure jobs for themselves and their friends.”[880]
The Jewish context of the Morant Bay Rebellion has been entirely omitted by Gad Heuman [whose writing, as Joyce notes attempts to inculcate a “post-imperial guilt complex”[881]] and his coterie of dedicated “post-colonial” researchers. Indeed, you will find no reference to Jamaica’s Jews in any existing historical work on the Morant Bay Rebellion. This is more than curious when one considers two quite astonishing facts. The first is that Jamaica’s press was, aside from a few miniscule church bulletins, solely in the hands of the island’s tiny Jewish community. An 1895 government guide to Jamaica for intending settlers listed the island’s media outlets as being The Colonial Standard, operated by George Levy, and The Gleaner, The Jamaica Princes Current, and The Tri-Weekly Gleaner—all operated by the Jewish De Cordova brothers.[882]
The second very crucial point is that George William Gordon was not the only person of high influence to be arrested for sedition and treason—the others were none other than the proprietor of The County Union, a Mr. Sidney Levien, and a “solicitor-at-law” by the name of D. P. Nathan.[883] The fact that this information can only be discovered by seeking out the primary documents, absent or obscured from our histories after almost 150 years and much spilled ink, is a matter of some significance.
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 29