British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment and Slavery, 1760–1807

249 Pages·2005·1.327 MB·English

by  Brycchan Carey (auth.)

British Abolitionism and
the Rhetoric of Sensibility
Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807
Brycchan Carey
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
General Editors: Professor Anne K. Mellor and Professor Clifford Siskin
Editorial Board: Isobel Armstrong, Birkbeck; John Bender, Stanford; Alan Bewell,
Toronto; Peter de Bolla, Cambridge; Robert Miles, Stirling; Claudia L. Johnson,
Princeton; Saree Makdisi, UCLA; Felicity Nussbaum, UCLA; Mary Poovey,
NYU; Janet Todd, Glasgow
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Cultures of Print will
feature work that does not fit comfortably within established boundaries—whether
between periods or between disciplines. Uniquely, it will combine efforts to engage
the power and materiality of print with explorations of gender, race, and class. By
attending as well to intersections of literature with the visual arts, medicine, law, and
science, the series will enable a large-scale rethinking of the origins of modernity.
Titles include:
Brycchan Carey
BRITISH ABOLITIONISM AND THE RHETORIC OF SENSIBILITY
Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807
E.J. Clery
THE FEMINIZATION DEBATE IN 18TH-CENTURY ENGLAND
Literature, Commerce and Luxury
Adriana Craciun
BRITISH WOMEN WRITERS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Citizens of the World
Peter de Bolla, Nigel Leask and David Simpson (editors)
LAND, NATION AND CULTURE, 1740–1840
Thinking the Republic of Taste
Anthony S. Jarrells
BRITAIN’S BLOODLESS REVOLUTIONS
1688 and the Romantic Reform of Literature
Mary Waters
BRITISH WOMEN WRITERS AND THE PROFESSION OF LITERARY CRITICISM,
1789–1832
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
Series Standing Order ISBN 978-1-4039-3408-6 (hardback)
978-1-4039-3409-3 (paperback) (outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing
order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the
address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN
quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Also by the same author
DISCOURSES OF SLAVERY AND ABOLITION: Britain and its Colonies, 1760–1838
(co-editor with Markman Ellis and Sara Salih)
British Abolitionism and
the Rhetoric of Sensibility
Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807
Brycchan Carey
© Brycchan Carey 2005
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-4626-3
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified
as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-52349-8 ISBN 978-0-230-50162-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230501621
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carey, Brycchan, 1967–
British abolitionism and the rhetoric of sensibility:writing, sentiment,
and slavery, 1760–1807/Brycchan Carey.
p. cm.—(Palgrave studies in the Enlightenment, romanticism, and
the cultures of print)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Slavery
in literature. 3. Antislavery movements—Great Britain—History—
18th century. 4. Antislavery movements—Great Britain—History—
19th century. 5. English literature—19th century—History and
criticism. 6. Abolitionists—Great Britain—History—18th century.
7. Abolitionists—Great Britain—History—19th century. 8. English
language—18th century—Rhetoric. 9. English language—
19th century—Rhetoric. 10. Antislavery movements in literature.
11. Sentimentalism in literature. 12. Romanticism—Great
Britain. I. Title. II. Series.
PR448.S55C37 2005
820.9′358—dc22 2005045414
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 The Rhetoric of Sensibility 18
2 Arguing in Prose: Abolitionist Letters and Novels 46
3 Arguing in Verse: Abolitionist Poetry 73
4 ‘Read This, and Blush’: The Pamphlet War of the 1780s 107
5 Feeling Out Loud: Sentimental Rhetoric in Parliament,
the Pulpit, and the Court of Law 144
6 Conclusion: Romanticism, Revolution, and
William Wilberforce’s Unregarded Tears 186
Notes 197
Bibliography 219
Index 231
v
Acknowledgements
This book started as a gleam of an idea in an undergraduate class at
Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, was tentatively explored in
an MA dissertation at Queen Mary, University of London, firmed up as
a PhD thesis at Queen Mary, and finally extensively re-written as a book
at Kingston University. In that time, dozens of friends and colleagues
have read, heard, commented on, and disputed with the arguments of
the book. Without these conversations, this book would not have been
possible. I cannot begin to list all the people whose thoughts and
comments over the years have helped my thinking with this book, but
I would like to make a small effort by thanking the following for feedback,
help, and support, in intellectual matters great and small: Ava Arndt,
Jennie Batchelor, Giles Bergel, Kevin Berland, Tom Betteridge, Frances
Botkin, Richard Bourke, Vincent Carretta, Warren Chernaik, Norma
Clarke, Deirdre Coleman, Angelo Costanzo, Alex Davies, Phil Dehne,
Madge Dresser, Jeremy Gregory, Sharon Harrow, Megan Hiatt, Margaret
Homberger, Avril Horner, Peter Howell, Carol Joyner, David Killingray,
Peter Kitson, Harriet Knight, Andrew Lincoln, Karen Lipsedge, Jack
Lynch, Bart Moore-Gilbert, John Mullan, Nora Nachumi, Don Newman,
Mary Peace, Lawrence Phillips, Debra Pring, Eric Reed, Chris Reid, Shaun
Regan, David Rogers, Sara Salih, Mark Stein, Bob Tennant, and Arthur
Torrington. I acknowledge a particular debt to Markman Ellis, who super-
vised the PhD thesis from which this book grew, and who has since
remained both a friend and a mentor. His help and support has always
gone well beyond the call of duty, and has always been deeply valued.
And I especially thank Megan Hickerson, who minutely engaged with
this book over a long period and whose contribution is visible on almost
every page.
Kingston University has been a very supportive institution, and my
colleagues in the School of Humanities have been a wonderful group to
work with and to learn from. In addition to those colleagues named above,
I would like to thank James Annesley, Martin Corner, Gail Cunningham,
Vesna Goldsworthy, John Ibbett, Meg Jensen, Jane Jordan, Erica
Longfellow, John Mepham, Anne Rowe, and Sarah Sceats for being
such fun to work with. I also thank my students, particularly those on
the courses ‘Romantic Vision’ and ‘Satire and Sensibility’, for cheerfully
vi
Acknowledgements vii
submitting to be guinea pigs while I tried out my latest theories, and
for raising many acute and difficult questions—not all of which have
been satisfactorily answered in this book.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the British Academy, both for
funding the PhD from which this book grew, and for supporting travel
to conferences at which much of the book was first aired. Without their
support, this book could not have been started, let alone completed.
Nor could it have been possible without the help of the librarians and
book delivery staff in the Rare Books Room at the British Library, who
have been ever helpful despite my increasingly esoteric requests. I also
thank the staff at the Queen Mary College Library, the University of
London Library, the Institute of Historical Research and the Institute of
English Studies at the University of London, the Bodleian library in
Oxford, and Kingston University Library.
I would like to extend special thanks to all the members of the
interdisciplinary e-mailing list, C18-L, who have answered my peculiar
and highly specific queries over the years, and who have in discussion
raised questions on topics of which I would not otherwise have dreamt.
In particular, I thank the list’s Netwallah, Kevin Berland, for making
the list possible. I would also like to thank all the members of the
Enlightenment and Romanticism Reading Group at the Institute of
English Studies, University of London, for many years of wonderful
discussion. In particular, I thank the group’s organisers: Elizabeth
Eger, Emma Francis, and Annie Janowitz.
Some parts of this book have previously been published in variant
forms. Part of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘“The Hellish Means of Killing and
Kidnapping”: Ignatius Sancho and the Campaign Against the “Abominable
Traffic for Slaves”’, in Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its
Colonies, 1760–1838, ed. Brycchan Carey, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 81–95. Parts of Chapter 5
appeared as ‘John Wesley’s “Thoughts Upon Slavery” and the Language
of the Heart’, The Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester
86, 3 (Autumn 2004), 269–84 and as ‘William Wilberforce’s Sentimental
Rhetoric: Parliamentary Reportage and the Abolition Speech of 1789’,
The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, 14 (2003), 281–305. I am grateful
to the editors; John Dunkley, Jeremy Gregory, and Jack Lynch,
respectively, and to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and
suggestions.
I have special thanks of a more personal sort to those close friends
and family members who have stood by me intellectually, practically,
and emotionally, during the long period in which this book grew. I thank
viii Acknowledgements
Jenny Bassett and Tony Risley for giving me space on the river, and
Frank Whately and Naomi Lyons for giving me space in their house
while the book was being finished. I thank Colin Roberts and, quite
separately, Lee Pope for forgiving my absences. For spectacular dinners
and therapeutic trips to the Proms, I thank Tony and Hilary Mason. For
the kitchen table at which this book was finally completed, I thank
Sarah Sanders. My family have supported me in many ways, and for all
their help and encouragement I thank Peter Carey, Anita Carey, Tamsin
Carey, Seb Carey, and Seth Cornwall. I particularly thank my mother,
Jackie Cornwall, for (amongst much in addition) her encouraging readings
of parts of this book, and Piers Carey and George Carey, who provided
computer know-how and hardware at crucial stages, without which this
book would have been carved on stone tablets.
Finally, I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers at
Palgrave Macmillan for their careful reading of earlier drafts of this
book, and for their invaluable suggestions and comments. In particular,
I thank Emily Rosser and Paula Kennedy for their patience and profes-
sionalism, and for supporting this book at every stage from proposal to
publication.
Introduction
In a letter to Laurence Sterne written in 1766, Ignatius Sancho complained
that ‘of all my favorite authors, not one has drawn a tear in favour of my
miserable black brethren’.1 Sancho, an African, former slave, and at the
time of writing, a butler to the Duke of Montagu, has been celebrated for
his emulation of the Shandean idiom in his letters, posthumously published
in 1782. In this letter, however, he moves beyond Shandyism to combine
three important discourses of the late eighteenth century. With his
emphasis on tears and misery, he is engaging with the fashionable literary
discourse of his day, sensibility, to produce a recognisably sentimental
mode of expression. With his demand for some sort of action on behalf of
his enslaved fellow Africans, he is also engaging in a form of antislavery,
the political movement that was to enter popular consciousness in varying
degrees from the 1760s onwards. Finally, his language is the language of
persuasion. This is a piece of rhetoric, written at a time when the discipline
of rhetoric was being systematically reconceptualised. Sancho’s letter is
more than merely imitatively Shandean: it is an important moment in
the development of a sentimental rhetoric of antislavery.
Sancho’s letter—discussed in detail in Chapter 2—is a fitting emblem
for this book, which examines the intersection of the three discourses
of sensibility, abolition, and rhetoric. I argue that during the middle to late
eighteenth century, many writers and public speakers used a distinct and
recognisable sentimental rhetoric, and that participants in the abolition
debate used this rhetoric particularly extensively. While points similar
to this have been made in passing before, no study to date has demon-
strated in detail the operation of sentimental rhetoric. In fact, no study
to date has attempted to define sentimental rhetoric at all, although
some critics use the phrase loosely to describe writing that seems
broadly sentimental and persuasive. My aim is to define sentimental
1