Reactions to the problem
of the slave trade39economy, and these theories were hardly an incitement to use black labour.
But in a world in which the law of profit prevailed, the economic argument
carried most weight, overriding humanitarian considerations and offering in
exchange for 'compassion' a distinctly worldly reward, i.e. better yields. We
might ask to what extent this form of anti-slavery was compatible with a code
of ethics and how far it was instrumental in preparing for the changes that
would inevitably come about.
In France, the realism of the Physiocrats was just as ambiguous ; it was
chiefly an answer to the actual crisis in the slave system, put into words by its
administrators.^31 Some of them were reformists, like Pierre Poivre who in 1766
urged the He de France settlers to treat their slaves with 'humanity' and not to
lose sight of the fact that they were 'men like themselves'. In exchange, the
slave would 'serve his master joyfully and faithfully'.^32 Others condemned the
evils of the slave 'system' from the economic standpoint; at all stages of the
process there were losses, because of the increased difficulty of carrying on the
trade and therefore the higher selling price, because of the overworking of
badly cultivated land, the excessively high mortality rate, militia expenses,
time wasted, and because of the insecurity, indeed the hostility, of the slaves :
'The slave is lazy because it is his only enjoyment in life, and his only way of
recapturing a part of himself robbed wholesale by his master. 'S3
There were others who believed in gradual emancipation, so that over
a period of twenty years the slave masses would become free workers. L'His-
toire des Deux Indes, written in 1780, reflected such a project proposed by
Bessner, the governor of Guiana. But Raynal's work gave prominence to the
ideas of the economists, set out between 1765 and 1775 in the Ephémérides du
Citoyen: why not let Africa itself produce the commodities that America now
supplied? Why not resettle the black slaves in Africa, where they would be
free? Admittedly this solution would entail keeping on the slave trade, but
it would do away with slavery which was detrimental to the economy of the
plantations.^34 Humanitarianism thus upheld the theories of the Physiocrats,
and the poet Saint-Lambert, on publishing Ziméo in the economists' journal,
wrote to Dupont de Nemours : ' It is an act of charity for you to take up the
cause of these poor Negroes; I have always pitied them greatly.. .'.^35
Pity, humanitarianism, philanthropy—these three words aptly sum up
the reactions of the eighteenth-century philosophers to the problem of slavery
and the slave trade. But with Buffon, Voltaire and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,^38
the emphasis was on moral condemnation. Helvétius' critique was consistent
with the views of the Physiocrats, but was more political : one must be careful
not to destroy the principle of self-interest which motivates men, and seen in
that light slavery is a mistake as well as a crime.^37 A horror of the 'system' was
the subject of most attacks, and in Voltaire's Candide, the Negro of Surinam
who was mutilated in compliance with the Black Code on runaway slaves,