§ 11. Can the Americans with a good grace complain of tyranny in the mother country for imposing an easy and inconsiderable tax, whilst they themselves are rioting on the labour of thousand of their species, torn from their dearest relations and doomed to abject and perpetual slavery?
In answer to this objection, it may be asked, where did this infamous commerce originate? Where is it still carried on with all the eagerness which avarice can inspire? Where, but in England? By what means can it be abolished? Surely by that power alone, which America acknowledges the parent state, may justly exercise over all her dominions, viz. the power of regulating their trade. The legislatures of some of the colonies have done what they could to put a stop to the importation of African slaves, by loading it with the heaviest duties: And others have attempted the total abolition of it, by acts of assembly which their governors refused to pass. And though they then petitioned for new instructions to their governors on this head, after all they failed of success. - Page ( 28 )
A fun thing happens when you crack open old books and start reading them. You start to see, hey wait a second, progressives are liars!
Just released into audio is the book Reflections on the rise, progress, and probable consequences, of the present contentions with the colonies. By a freeholder., which was originally published just three months after the United States declared Independence. October 18th, 1776.
It's not all that difficult to look to American Patriots living on North American soil in the 1770s and find voices proclaiming grief that they could not get their laws passed beyond the Empire's prying eyes which would put an end to slaving. But what would those voices today who are proponents of The 1619 Project say to a British voice, living in England and who had never set foot anywhere in America, who also acknowledges the prime role the Empire played in introducing and carrying on slavery on North American shores? Erskine isn't the only one.
This is the impossible position the progressives have put themselves in. Even early British citizens who were becoming anti-slavery could see the obvious. America wanted to get rid of slavery but the Empire kept stopping them from doing it.
Any progressive who wants to blame the U.S. for slavery and the U.S. did not even exist cannot answer. Any progressive who wants to blame the U.S. for slavery and the colonies were the first anti-transatlantic-slavery in the western hemisphere cannot answer. What was being said on both sides of the Atlantic - American patriots who wanted it gone and the later British abolitionists who would follow their lead - this is our golden ticket.
