The Misguided Attempt to ‘Cancel’ Edmund Burke over Slavery

Y ou be the judge: Edmund Burke’s brother, Richard, owned eleven slaves in the West Indies; Burke co-authored a book noting that the expansion of the slave trade could serve the commercial interests of the British Empire; Burke was one of the architects of the Free Port Act of 1766, which promoted free trade — trade that necessarily included the slave market — between Britain’s West Indian and American colonies; Burke defended the independence of the African Company, which trafficked slaves; Burke criticized Lord Dunmore’s plan to liberate American slaves to fight on behalf of the British during America’s War of Independence; Burke at times used language that reinforced European stereotypes of Africans in the 18th century; Burke drafted a plan for gradual abolition but did not release it publicly; Burke never introduced the plan in Parliament; and Burke opposed immediate abolition in the House of Commons in the early 1790s.

So did Burke support slavery? Did he benefit from it?

The U.K. parliament’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art thinks so. The committee recently placed Burke’s name on a list of 68 British statesmen whose paintings and sculptures adorn the Palace of Westminster who have ties to the “forced labour of enslaved men, women and children in the British colonies and beyond.” The parliamentary inquiry listed Burke under the heading of those who “supported slavery” or “had financial or family interests in the transatlantic slave trade and slavery.” The inquiry is part of a broader initiative to broaden the “diversity and inclusion” of Parliament’s art collection. The committee, which is also identifying those individuals who “campaigned for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery,” acknowledges that the interpretation of the artwork is “constantly under review” and that legislators’ views on slavery may have shifted over time.

The committee’s decision to link Burke with pro-slavery activities, based on the facts above, may appear to stand on firm ground.

Until one considers: Burke was perhaps the first statesman to draft a comprehensive plan for the gradual abolition of the slave trade and slavery in modern Anglo-American history (a radical idea at the time he composed it in 18th-century Britain); Burke questioned the moral legitimacy of slavery on the floor of the House of Commons — and as a representative of slave-trading constituents at that — in an era when few legislators dared to do so; the book Burke co-authored was one of the earliest English publications in the 18th century to offer sharp criticisms of slavery; the same book called for the humane treatment of slaves and proposed granting them the liberties to own property, preserve familial attachments, and receive religious instruction, decades before the birth of popular anti-slavery movements; Burke’s plan was praised by William Wilberforce, the most distinguished anti-slavery parliamentarian in British history; Burke reportedly intended to introduce his plan in Parliament but believed Wilberforce possessed greater political capital to pass it; Burke switched his positions from gradual abolition to immediate abolition and back to gradual abolition based on shifting political circumstances, not on his equivocation over the morality of emancipation; Burke was recognized by Thomas Clarkson, author of one of the earliest books on the abolition movement, as a precursor to the movement; Wilberforce, as well as the leader of the abolition movement in Parliament following Wilberforce’s death (Thomas Fowell Buxton) and the architect of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 (Edward Stanley), all drew inspiration from Burke’s plan; and Stanley’s statesmanship, according to his biographer, was informed by “Burkean maxims.”

Burke’s approach to slavery and the slave trade show that the parliamentary inquiry’s rigid distinctions between those who supported or benefited from them and those who fought against human trafficking vastly simplify the shades of complexity when assessing the legacy of historical figures. For the committee’s second list of individuals who opposed slavery included Wilberforce, Buxton, Stanley, and Clarkson — all of whom viewed Burke’s proposed reforms for gradual abolition in a favorable light, and all of whom were influenced by varying degrees of his anti-slavery views.

It is quite possible that Burke received tangential benefits from slavery, given his connections to Richard and his promotion of free trade within the British Empire. Yet this insinuation by the parliamentary inquiry feeds the spurious perception that he was at best a disingenuous condoner of human trafficking and at worse a heartless facilitator of it.

But what is the significance of the indirect benefits (if any) Burke received from slavery when examining his legacy on the topic? The reality is that it was very difficult for any individual — including both British slave-owners and abolitionists — in early modern Britain to avoid the direct or indirect influence of slavery and the slave trade. Indeed, it is plausible that Wilberforce, Buxton, Stanley, and Clarkson derived advantages from these heinous practices as well, by virtue of the uncomfortable yet basic fact that the idea of global “trade” from the 17th to the 19th centuries was inextricably linked with the trafficking of slaves — and trade advanced the commercial interests of the British Empire and its subjects. (To what extent human trafficking contributed to the economic prosperity of the empire is still a matter of debate.)

The distinctive quality of Burke’s engagement with slavery was not his familial or political connections to the institution. It was his vision of purpose to undermine it: to imagine a British realm without slavery and the slave trade; to draft a comprehensive, if flawed, proposal for gradual abolition and gradual manumission; to shape subsequent British plans to abolish slavery and the slave trade; and to cast aspersions on the activities in Parliament that carried great political risk.

It would therefore be far more accurate to place Burke on a list of Brits who sought to end, not support, the “forced labour of enslaved men, women and children in the British colonies and beyond.” He was neither a saint nor a devil when it came to the slavery question, but the evidence weighs heavily in favor of his anti-slavery sentiments.

Even more: If the committee is seeking to make Parliament’s art collection more diverse, then it would struggle to find an early modern British thinker who championed the original conception of diversity — a deep respect for the variety of cultures and peoples decorating the globe — with greater force and clarity than Burke. Progressives in general might find sympathy with aspects of Burke’s thought.

This debate goes far beyond Burke, however. It is a question of intellectual humility, perspective, and self-reflection in understanding our shared cultural inheritance. For recent efforts, such as the committee’s Procrustean dichotomy, to separate heroes from villains on the question of slavery or similarly monstrous practices read contemporary terms of debate anachronistically into prior historical epochs; overlook the ways that different statesmen supported different means to attain the same moral aim; minimize the importance of historical context when evaluating the character of statesmen and thinkers; understate the sharp tensions that legislators faced between their private views and the political constraints they faced; imbue in our own age a false sense of moral purity; and fuel a conception of utopian society cleansed of original sin.

As much as we might like, we cannot break free from or remake this inheritance, which has been enriched by acts of virtue and debauched by acts of malice. We must then confront both. Hence, if the purpose of the committee is to reckon with Britain’s history with slavery in a responsible and accurate fashion, then a recognition of whatever advantages it conferred to Burke and other Britons is necessary but insufficient. It is equally necessary to formally recognize the efforts of Burke and other Britons — not just the ones on the committee’s current anti-slavery list — in criticizing, undermining, and resisting the perpetuation of the institution.

What, then, is an alternative to the hero/villain narrative when judging the moral stature of historical actors connected to ancient wrongs? Some guiding principles: (1) An inquiry should give explicit acknowledgment at the beginning of the report of the fallibility of man; (2) Instead of carving out strict binaries, the inquiry should simply list historical figures and reveal all aspects of their involvement with the wrong, both scrupulous and unscrupulous; (3) Formal condemnation of such figures with complex legacies should be a last resort, not a first resort. It is this kind of measured assessment, forthright in identifying sin but cautious in leveling swift retribution on our noble yet imperfect heritage, that would come closer to doing justice to these statesmen — and to victims of crimes against humanity, including those slaves who deserved to be treated as men and women with dignity, rather than, as Burke and his co-author wrote in describing masters’ attitude toward them, “a sort of beasts, and without souls.”