114

Wages or the Whip. An essay on the comparative cost and productiveness of free and slave labour

Anti-Slavery International, 'Recovered Histories' collection. Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature, University of London. Friends House Library, London. Rhodes House, Oxford. British Library. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Slave Free Labour Wages Whip Economic Slavery Comparative

An attempt to argue the inefficiency of slavery in the long run- "that slave-holding is as unprofitable as it is criminal, as costly as it is unjust" (2). Like Adam Hodgson's Letter to Jean-Baptiste Say in 1823, this pamphlet cites economists of slavery such as Adam Smith and Heinrich von Storch, as well as Koster's 1816 Travels in BraziL and the French writer Le Poivre. Conder also gives examples of free labour sugar plantation schemes from around the world, including Bengal, Indonesia and Mexico, and free cotton plantations in Latin America, in order to prove: "that the unhappy slaves are capable of becoming peasants, farmers, and landowners" (37-38).

The title of this pamphlet is taken from a speech by Thomas Fowell Buxton in the House of Commons in May 1832, in which he described the policy on slavery as a clear choice between: "Inducement or Compulsion; Wages or the Whip".