038840engo 2

Reactions to the problem

of the slave trade

35

had the advantage of keeping the system fundamentally intact (the plantation

and mission economy, and the tacit approval of the local clergy) and only

attacking traders and company agents whose lucrative ventures could deserv-

edly cause an outcry. Nevertheless, by drawing attention, through the very

arguments they put forward, to the fact that the system depended entirely on

a form of commerce which consisted in trading in human lives, and in which

slaves of both sexes and of all ages exchanged hands in lots as though they

were commodities and not human beings belonging to the same ethnic group

or family, a form of commerce in which people were treated on the slave-ships

as no animal would ever have been treated, those who raised these questions

sowed the seeds of doubt in many a mind : could one take delivery of these

slaves without another thought for the inhumanity of the whole process?

The Protestants had inherited the same 'dualistic'^16 tradition as the

Catholics, accepting the existence of slavery but not the fact of reducing a

man to slavery by unjust and violent means. They believed even more firmly

than the Catholics that in a world fraught with sin, slavery was a means of

redemption for those whom God had reduced to that state. They, too, proposed

to spread the Word to the servile masses, but their far more rigorous doctrine

dictated other means of achieving this end. They did their utmost to improve

master-slave relations, preaching charity and moderation to the former and

submission and respect to the latter. Richard Baxter would say to the slaves :

reverence that providence of God which calleth you to a servant's life, and murmur

not at your labour or your low condition, but know your mercies, and be thankful

for them.^17

This ideology of the 'good slave' and the 'good master' was based not only
on a theological precept (the proper exercise of 'servitude'), but was also in
keeping with the moral standards of everyday life, so typically Protestant; in
keeping, too, with the ideal of Christian brotherhood.
At any rate, far from being opposed to the slave trade, the Protestants
saw in it a means to serve the cause of evangelization ; and it must not be
forgotten that in the Protestant world the success of commercial undertakings
was evidence of divine approval, and that when it came to deciding who was
to blame, to put all the onus on the greedy, ruthless dealer rather than the
planter, was positively unthinkable. We shall see, moreover, that the concept
of sin plays a decisive role in religious ideology. Let me simply say at this
juncture that whereas for the Catholics, the wicked trader was more to blame
than the master who owned the slaves, Protestant ethics required that the master
be held responsible for the slaves whom God had bestowed on him for their
mutual benefit.