Why was banning the slave trade so controversial?

Factual Questions
1

[Suprise! Not about the US constitution]

Mr Fox, too, intense as was his abhorrence of the Slave Trade, sat in the same Cabinet with Lord Sidmouth and Mr Windham, who voted to the last against the abolition of that trade.

–Macaulay, “CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY OF LORD MELBOURNE. (JANUARY 29, 1840) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY 1840.”
Ok it seems this, and the debates pictured in the recent Wilberforce movie, makes me ask why banning the slave trade, from the perspective of the UK Parliament, was so difficult? It would seem to me a “slam dunk” case, as how many interests could possibly be around to single handedly delay the bill for so long? How many slave-traders were there to bribe Windham? I can see that the ship owners of the passage would still want to operate for money, but against the moral feeling of the rest of the nation? And also, the existing slave owners in say, Jamaica, would presumably NOT wanted more slave importation, since that lowers the value of their existing ‘stock’.

2

  1. There was money to be made in the slave trade, and the people making the money were willing to work to keep it going. Moral feeling is one thing, money is another.

  2. Planters in the Caribbean needed the slave trade because conditions were so bad that reproduction in the slave population was lower than the death rate.

  3. Many influential Britons (Nelson, for instance) thought that the slave trade was vital as a source of trained British sailors. During the Napoleonic Wars, when the British fleet was the principal bulwark against Napoleon, this argument carried some weight.

3

Windham was Secretary for War and the Colonies, and he took the attitude that banning the trade would just cause trouble in the colonies, and who wants that? Lord Sidmouth was, honestly, just a jerk. :slight_smile:

But beyond that, there were a few objections. That it would cause trouble in the colonies was a big one. Some people were afraid that it would lead to abolition of slavery. Like one member said, “I can think of no man living, who looks at the matter without prejudice, who can be of the opinion that the negroes will be in a better state after emancipation than they are at present.” Like another said, he was in favor of liberty, but for civilized people, and that it was dangerous to talk about these things “among a people so unintelligent and so easily provoked to revolt as the negroes.”

There were the arguments that it would hurt the navy, that it would hurt the ports, that it would threaten the sugar trade, that it would hurt Britain’s relationships with the African tribes (and ending it actually did lead to rioting on the Gold Coast.)

But as was mentioned, it wasn’t a slam dunk thing. There were major economic, military, and racist reasons to continue it.

4

Besides, whatever the issue is, there will always be significant amount of people who oppose changes to the status quo. It’s human nature.

5

I’m sure attaching morals to the act of money-making is like ruining a good whiskey with vinegar to some people.

6

Tangentially, it almost seemed like a slam dunk in 1789, but the French revolution led to some slave rebellions in the Caribbean. These people who had been savagely flogged, tortured and beaten to death for years, actually killed some whites (oh the horror!). This, together with the general fear of radicalism led rapidly to the general public to think that it is safest to just not change anything, ever.