I hope that Cornerites will check in with Rich’s column and all the other material over on the home page about William Wilberforce and the film Amazing Grace. Like most things in the political realm, the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was not perfect: beyond the metropolis, in the British colonies, slaves were owned (though could not be sold) for another quarter-century. But Wilberforce’s life reminds us that great men don’t shirk things because the focus-group numbers look unpromising. For his pains, his countrymen are now raised in schools where they’re taught that the British Empire was the pre-eminent source of racism and oppression, and they never learn that the single greatest force in ending slavery around the globe were a few Englishmen and the ships of the Royal Navy. And in the end isn’t self-loathing just an excuse for lethargy? To insist you’re inherently wicked absolves one from having to do anything.

The same kind of lies we told ourselves about slavery we now tell ourselves about other parts of the world, and for the same reason – because big changes are tough and who needs the hassle? The hardest thing in any society is “the reformation of manners”.