Personal Slavery Established and the Slavery Debate Between Benjamin Rush and Richard Nisbet

When Rush and Nisbet were in hot debate, an anonymous writer joined their debate. On November 15 1773, a political tract entitled Personal Slavery Established, by the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason appeared. Till now nobody knows who wrote it. However, it is an undeniable fact that the tract was a response to the Rush-Nisbet slavery debate. In Lester B. Scherer’s view, the anonymous writer gave readers three clues. On the title page, the anonymous writer wrote an epigraph: “However amiable Justice and Virtue may be in our abstract ideas of them: the policy of Kingdoms and Commercial States, ought ever to be regulated by the more important considerations of necessity and convenience.” It explained that the policy of Kingdoms and Commercial States should be based on necessity and convenience rather than Justice and Virtue, which directly echoed to the “political necessity” in Nisbet's work and the principles of justice and virtue in Rush’s pamphlet. Moreover, the author highly praised the Committee-Men of the Royal African Company and claimed that the slave trade was a “generous disinterested exertion of benevolence and philanthropy.” Finally, the author pointed out that he would like to make “some corrections, transpositions, and emendations” based on Nisbet’s pamphlet. It was highly possible that Richard Nisbet was the original author. However, lacking of strong evidences, we cannot harshly draw such a conclusion.


Although we cannot figure out what was the purpose of the anonymous author, we can notice that it directly responded to Nisbet's attack on Rush. In publishing it, the anonymous writer pointed out: “I will only say, that in gratitude to the author of ‘Slavery not Forbidden by Scripture, &c.’ I have endeavoured to adopt this plan so fully, that the following pages may answer the purpose of a second edition of that celebrated work, with some corrections, transpositions, and emendations.” Moreover, he also mentioned that he wanted to reconsider Rush’s Address: “I shall proceed to consider the Address not only as it relates to Slavery, but also as a most scandalous and audacious libel on every individual inhabitant of every island in the West-Indies.” It was rather clear that he disagreed with Rush’s arguments on slavery in the Address, because the author claimed that it “never giving himself time to consider our natural frailties — the impossibility of absolute perfection — that there are faults in every human institution, and that till self-interest ceases to have influence over the actions of men, proposals that strike at the very root of their temporal interests — their ease — their convenience and grandeur, will never be listened to.” Noticing “the impossibility of absolute perfection” and “the faults in every human institution,” the anonymous writer thought that Justice and Virtue should not be applied to the slaves. Rather, they “ought ever to be regulated by the more important considerations of necessity and convenience.” By saying “necessity and convenience,” the anonymous writer supported the necessity of the slavery in West-Indian islands.