For The Sentiment Emotions as Practice in the Development of Eighteenth- Century British Abolitionism Stefania Chiro School of Humanities Department of English and Creative Writing The University of Adelaide October 2017 Acknowledgments So many thanks need to go to my supervisor, Dr Heather Kerr, for her unfailing guidance throughout the researching, planning, and writing process, for calmly reassuring me during my moments of self-doubt, and for continuing to do so despite the tyranny of distance. Thanks also to my co-supervisor, Professor Amanda Nettelbeck, whose encouraging feedback was very much appreciated. I also need to thank the British Library and the Liverpool Record Office for giving me access to their incredible archives. It was a true privilege to be able to get my hands on such important and fragile documents. To my friends and family, thanks for not giving up on me over the past few years. Thanks to my father for being a sounding board for my ideas and, of course, to Jordan for keeping me grounded and allowing me to do what I have to do without question or complaint. Finally, to my mum, thank you for your unconditional love and support. You pulled me through this more than anyone with your encouragement and your unwavering belief in me. 3 Abstract At the end of the eighteenth century the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade emerged, arguing for reform based on notions of humanity and the fellow-feeling of mutual sympathy. With slavery still one of the biggest and most profitable crimes in the world today, how public sentiment was mobilised to create the first humanitarian movement to attempt to put an end to the slave trade remains a pertinent question. The chief aim of this thesis is to investigate the development of abolitionist emotional norms, evidenced in their mobilising materials, through an exploration of “emotional practices”, Monique Scheer’s concept for historical change in emotions. This approach, when combined with Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of “emotional communities” and the rescripting of emotional norms, opens up the possibility of engaging with abolitionist texts in a new way, giving access to the methodology behind their politically engaged appeals to emotions like compassion and benevolence. Through analysis of the sentimental arguments employed across a range of texts, written both before and during the abolition campaigns, I uncover the centrality of the idea of emotional cultivation and improvement to the political agenda of abolitionist writers. In doing so I argue that there is a congruence between eighteenth-century theories of potentially transformative moral sentiments and the assumptions about the plasticity of human nature and emotions that informs emotions as a kind of practice. However, I do so while acknowledging that there are fundamental eschatological and teleological differences between the two. The politics of sympathy expressed by abolitionist academics, newspaper correspondents, preachers and divines, writers of fiction, and poets had an educative, progressivist, moral purpose which post-Romantic theories of 4 emotions have revised or discarded. Through their conviction that steady cultivation of the moral sentiments led to active and virtuous reform of society, abolitionists give their own account of the historical and emotional changes that saw communities within Britain come together to fight for abolition. Their conviction in the efficacy of their politics of sympathy may have wavered once their attempts at sentimental moral persuasion failed in the combative context of parliamentary debate. However, the question for my thesis is not whether emotional practice can answer why abolitionism developed or why it did or did not succeed. Rather, the question I ask is whether an emotions-as-practice approach can give an effective account of the methods by which communities manage emotions and how they understand the emotional shifts which contribute, alongside other socio- and cultural historic factors, to social change. 5 Table of Contents Declaration 2 Acknowledgments 3 Abstract 4 Table of Contents 6 Chapter 1: Introduction 8 1.1 Overview of Scholarship: A Brief History of the History of British Abolitionism 10 1.2 Sentiment, Sensibility and Sympathy: Key Terms in the Abolitionist Emotional Repertoire 14 1.3 Theory and Methodology 20 Chapter 2: The “Mind Habitually Disposed to Cherish...Humanity”: Emotional Self-Improvement and the Cultivation of Abolitionist Sentiments 32 2.1 “An Habit is Necessary”: Cultivating Sentimental Communities 35 2.2 Refining “the Feelings of the Heart”: Cultivating Humanitarian Sensibilities in Spaces of Sociability and Learning 48 2.3 Thomas Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species : Politicising the Sentimental Ethic 66 2.4 Conclusion 78 Chapter 3: Sociability and the Press: Disseminating a Politics of Sympathy 81 3.1 Social Sympathy and the Periodical Press: Establishing “Rules of Practice” 85 3.2 “Callous to Every Humane Feeling”: Antislavery Sentiment during the Somerset Trial 107 3.3 “Humanity-mania”: Newspaper Debates during the Campaign for Abolition 114 3.4 Conclusion 125 Chapter 4: Mercy Recommended : Philanthropy, Tears, and Preaching for Abolition 128 4.1 “Doing Good”: The Cultivation of Benevolence through Charitable Practice 131 4.2 Compassionate Weeping: Mobilising Tears in Religious Communities 142 6 4.3 “On the Subject of the Slave Trade”: Abolitionist Sermons and the Politics of Sympathy 163 4.4 Conclusion 175 Chapter 5: “The Kind Contagion” of Abolitionist Sentiment: Adopting and Adapting Sentimental Reading Practices 179 5.1 Sentimental Literary Practice: Writing and Reading “For the Sentiment” 181 5.2 Pre-Movement Antislavery Literature: Towards a Politics of Sympathy in Sentimental Fiction 194 5.3 “Weep with me Substantial Ills”: Poetry as a Tool of the Abolitionist Politics of Sympathy 208 5.4 Conclusion 237 Chapter 6: Conclusion 240 Bibliography 257 7 Chapter 1: Introduction The Atlantic slave trade flourished from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, and was a source of immense revenue for the European governments and individuals involved. For much of this period British planters and slave traders had the full support of the legislature and their source of income was little questioned by the public. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, a change in public opinion led to the creation of a social movement which built its arguments for the abolition of the institution on notions of humanity, sympathy and natural rights. Such terms had become so important during the abolition campaigns that many pro-slavery lobbyists and writers complained that “humanity is now the pop’lar cry” of reformist communities. 1 A “Humanity-mania” had spread across the country and its “Furor” had “seized on the people”. 2 The British movement for the abolition of the slave trade, officially founded in 1787, involved people from all levels of society and from widely different religious and political backgrounds. 3 It was perhaps the first time in modern society that a social movement, from grass-roots committees to influential political figures, arose out of a concern for the condition of others. The debate over whether Britain should abolish the slave trade dominated public discourse during the height of abolitionist campaigning, from early 1787 to around 1793, when war with France took its place as the biggest national concern. Newspapers, pamphlets, popular literature, cartoons, sermons, public debates, 1 John Walker, A Descriptive Poem on the Town and Trade of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1789), line 56, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale, (CW0114109230). 2 Public Advertiser , 31 March 1788, 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, Gale, (Z2001201301); Matthew Gregson quoted in Averil Mackenzie-Grieve, The Last Years of the English Slave Trade, Liverpool 1750-1807 (London: Putnam, 1941), 194. 3 The movement was instigated by the establishment of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London in June 1787. Similar committees were set up around the country in its wake whose purpose was to raise awareness through publications of political tracts, essays, sermons, and poems, and gathering petitions to send to parliament. 8 and plays were dedicated to discussing abolitionism, whether for, against, or somewhere in between. With slavery still one of the biggest and most profitable global crimes today, how public sentiment was mobilised to create the first humanitarian movement to attempt to put an end to the slave trade remains an interesting object of study. While the question of whether legislative abolitionism was achieved as a direct result of a newly developed humanitarian impulse is debateable, there is no doubt that a fundamental change occurred in the eighteenth century which opened up the possibility for a movement like abolitionism to emerge. Understanding just one aspect of this change is the aim of my study. The focus of my thesis is to explore how emotional practice informed the mobilising methods of the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. Its chief aim is to investigate the development of abolitionist emotional norms through an exploration of various communities’ “emotional practices”. 4 Taking into account specific cultural understandings of the role of emotions in eighteenth- century British society, we can begin to make sense of why activists used sentimental argument and expression to mobilise public opinion. The spaces used by abolitionists served as tools of those emotional practices, whereby shared emotional norms and values were developed, communicated, and reinforced. Such norms are revealed within abolitionist literature, which highlights the political and social purpose of emotional practice within the movement. Through analysis of the sentimental arguments employed across a range of texts, written both before and during the abolition campaigns, I uncover the centrality of the 4 Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (And is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion”, History and Theory 51 (May 2012): 193-220, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x.