British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, entiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807 Anthony John Harding Brycchan Carey , British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. viii + 240. £45 hardback. 1 4039 4626 4. Most influential studies of eighteenth-century British abolitionism have treated sensibility and its rhetoricas an embarrassing appendage to a movement that, however we judge its eventual achievements, had serious political work to do. From a postcolonial perspective, portrayals of Africans in abolitionist writings are merely another way to establish European superiority by treating the African as a stereotyped object of pity. Literary critics, even those inclined to lament the neglect of 'poetry of sensibility', have usually found abolitionist verse almost unreadable. And most cultural historians have viewed sentimental rhetoric, at least in its printed form, as an amusing sideshow, as if no-one apart from a few Uncle Tobys and Marianne Dashwoods could really have been persuaded by such poor stuff. There is much presentist prejudice in these attitudes, and Brycchan Carey sets out to showthat the rhetoric of sensibility – a term he uses interchangeably with 'sentimental rhetoric' – did have a demonstrable impact on public debate and even, in the long term, on legislative intervention. The period selected for detailed analysis is actually 1766 to 1792: from Sarah Scott's History of Sir George Ellison to the enactment of a supposedly 'amended' – but, in fact, gutted – Bill to abolish the slave trade. In these three decades, a large number of abolitionist publications poured from the press, the majority of them relying on the rhetoric of sensibility for at least some of their persuasive power. The scholar who wants to go beyond the received view of this material faces the difficult challenge of, first, selecting and categorising the writings of the abolitionists and their opponents, and then developing a method of analysis that will show how sentimental rhetoric worked, or at least how its practitioners expected it to work. This study analyses much material not traditionally considered 'literary', such as James Ramsay's 1784 Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves and Joseph Priestley's 1788 anti-slavery sermon, and even attempts a reading of the parliamentary debates, using the admittedly fragmentary, often contradictory accounts that in those pre-Hansard days were all that could be printed. The inclusion of pamphlet literature, journalism, and even some oral material provides a host of valuable insights into the range and persuasive power of anti-slavery discourse. Carey substantiates his claim that participants in the debate made extensive use of 'a distinct and recognisable sentimental rhetoric' (1). However, both the way in which the material is organised and the rather formulaic method of analysis make the book more difficult to use than it should be, particularly for anyone looking for a critical study of abolitionist writings, or a history of the movement's cultural impact. In Carey's arrangement of his material, chronology takes second place to genre. For instance, some letters between Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne, published in 1775, are dealt with in Chapter 2, because they count as literary prose; the poem 'The Dying Negro' (first published 1773) is analysed in Chapter 3; but the 'forensic rhetoric' which resulted in the 'Mansfield judgment' of 1772 (crucial for the context of both the poem and the letters) is not considered until Chapter 5. This leadsto awkward attempts to link backwards and forwards across chapter divisions. No dramatic works are considered, for the rather unsatisfactory reason that drama 'calls for a type of analysis that is beyond the scope of this book' (50), so there is no account of plays or operas that expressed abolitionist sentiment, such as the very successful Inkle and Yarico by George Colman the Younger. Readers should take note, then, that the design of the book derives from its argument, namely, 'that reformers, who may well have already made the decision to be reformers, took up and used the already available rhetoric of sensibility, transforming it in subtle and not so subtle ways as [End Page 88] they did so' (9). The focus on showing 'how that rhetoric worked' (18...