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An Address from the Liverpool Society for the Abolition of Slavery, on the safest and most efficacious means of promoting the gradual improvement of the Negro slaves in the British West India Islands, preparatory to their becoming free labourers, and on the expected consequences of such change

Anti-Slavery International, 'Recovered Histories' collection. Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature, University of London. British Library.

Address Liverpool Society Gradual Abolition Slavery British West Indies Caribbean Colonies

This address suggests that British public opinion is broadly anti-slavery: "the Society is convinced it is joined by the voice of the nation at large" (4), and that gradual abolition of slavery via reforms of slave law would benefit the British colonies. Like the influential pamphlet, Immediate not gradual abolition (1824), it argues that Britain could only adopt a position of moral superiority with regard to other European countries over the slave trade if slaves were not being bought and sold in her own colonies, and thus suggests the immediate cessation of trade in slaves between Caribbean islands.