Slavery in Romania and Liverpool

I showed my article (blog post sounds inelegant but little essay sound precious) on American slavery to a friend of mine, who commented interestingly:

I also come from a slave owning family…yes…gypsies were slaves..and by the way the largest slave owner was the Orthodox Church, being the largest landowner in the Romanian principalities up to Romanian unification

Do I feel guilty about it?  How could I since it was not me but my ancestors who indulged in the practice?  Furthermore, anyone with a sense of history knows that what is deemed “moral” changes all the time (although I am not a moral relativist and I certainly do not condone slavery today).  However, the fact is that “gypsy owners” at the time did not perceive that they were doing anything wrong. I am also proud that we were apparently the first Wallachian family to voluntarily give up their gypsy slaves, which interestingly enough happened almost at the same time as slavery was abolished in the US (though there was no direct linkage at  the time, unlike today where what happens in the US reverberates round the world)

It is sad that politically correct people focus on historic slavery, whereas the practice continues today throughout many developing countries, especially Africa and the Middle East.  People with a grudge to bear do not seem to care about the current practice of slavery, but focus on what happened over 200 years ago, which in any event cannot be undone.  There is also quasi-slavery throughout the developing world which is economic exploitation to a degree that is slavery in all but name. Another interesting point is that for all the achievements of the European Enlightenment, it is not liberal political theorists like Locke to whom we owe the abolition of slavery, but to dedicated Christians who lobbied against the practice, leading to its abolition in the British Empire'

He is right that people talk about slaves owned by whites two hundred years ago but  do not speak of slavery today. Today very many of the slave-owners are Muslims. It is not slavery that upsets people today but whites oppressing non-whites.

I doubt if Locke and the Whigs disapproved of slavery. Whigs are heartless people. It was Low Church Tories like Wilberforce and Lord Macaulay’s father Zachary who persuaded the political class in the UK that slavery had to be abolished. Interestingly, W. E. Gladstone when he was the rising hope of the stern unbending Tories, made his maiden speech justifying slavery. He was a Liverpudlian – Liverpool was a city that waxed fat on slavery – and his father Sir John Gladstone made his fortune in the slave trade. W.E. Gladstone was also High Church. He later, during the American Civil War when he was a leading Liberal politician, described the American Confederacy as 

A nation rightly struggling to be free.

I think, by the way, that Gladstone was right about this, but he said it at a time when Lancashire cotton girls, made out of work by the Royal Navy's embargo of the Confederacy, were nevertheless backing the North.

Note:

I did some research after writing this - it took five minutes, so wonderful a thing is the internet - and found that Locke wrote about slavery. He thought it only legitimate to enslave people if they were prisoners of war. It was legitimate for a just conqueror to enslave them because slavery is

but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive.

I am indebted to Eric Brandt for telling me that John Locke invested money in the slave trade and helped draft the Constitution of the Carolinas, which provided for slavery.

I dislike Locke and the Whigs and all the shabby crew of American rebels and love Tories, like Dr Johnson, who said 

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? 

The Old Testament approves of slavery ('Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's slave') and Jesus did not condemn it, unlike divorce. Still, it was the Bible that in the end brought about the abolition of slavery, not Locke, Hume, Voltaire or Rousseau and certainly not the Koran.