RAMSAY, James.

Objections to the abolition of the slave trade, with answers. To which are prefixed, strictures on a late publication, intitled, 'Considerations on the emancipation of negroes, and the abolition of the slave trade, by a West India planter'.

London, James Phillips, 1788. 8vo, pp. [iv], 60, complete with the half-title (lightly soiled); disbound. First edition. ‘Deals with 77 objections, mostly political and economic’ (Hogg). The Considerations, to which part of the present work is a reply, was written by ‘a West-India planter’ and had appeared earlier the same year. It had argued that ‘slavery cannot be abolished and abolition of the slave trade will only injure the colonies and Britain, though it should be regulated’ (Hogg).Ramsay’s fundamental anti-slavery work, Essay on the treatment and conversion of African slaves in the British sugar colonies (1784), had been greeted by ‘a flood of vituperation from the planter community in anonymous letters to national and colonial newspapers ... Initially, Ramsay bore the acrimony of the planters alone until Wilberforce, whom he had met in 1783, and T. Clarkson, his curate in 1787, rallied to the abolitionist cause. He was thereafter consulted by Pitt as the Middletons co-ordinated the anti-slavery campaign. In the run-up to the first Commons debate on abolition (May 1789) – a response to the deluge of petitions following the controversy over Ramsay’s books – Ramsay prepared briefs for Wilberforce and other politicians containing many of the moral arguments and much of the evidence which Wilberforce used in his speech’ (Oxford DNB).Hogg 1896; Sabin 67717.

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