"Threatening to Virtue:” Abolitionism in Britain

In 1713, Britain acquired the asiento de Negros, an agreement to to annually supply Spanish America with 140,000 enslaved Africans. In 1746 political economist Malachy Postlethwayte was moved to declare the slave trade “an inexhaustible Fund of Wealth and Naval Power to this Nation.” However, just eighty-seven years later in 1833, Parliament abolished West Indian slavery. How could public sentiment swing so decisively?