The British Zion: Congregationalism, Politics, and Empire, 1790-1850

3. The Missionary Movement and the Politics of Abolition

53 3 The Missionary Movement and the Politics of Abolition “And, after all, it is merely about a poor missionary!” the antislavery MP Henry Brougham declared to the House of Commons, mocking the arguments of his opponents who would “shut [their] ears against all complaints” regarding the trial and condemnation of the missionary John Smith. Smith, an agent of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in the colony of Demerara , had died a “miserable death” in the colony’s jail following his arrest and conviction for instigating a rebellion among the colony’s slaves in 1823. The persecution of Smith, “a humble minister of the Gospel,” by the Demerara planters created a stir within the antislavery movement upon which Brougham sought to capitalize when he rose before the House on the first of June 1824. “It is the first time,” he chided his opponents, “that I have to learn that the weakness of the sufferer . . . left single and alone to contend against power exercised with violence” should cause the House “to refuse to investigate the treatment of the individual.” Brougham went on, not merely framing Smith’s ordeal as a matter of the weak against the powerful, but in good Whig fashion as a matter of civil and religious equality. Did Smith’s “connection with that class of religious people . . . separated from the national Church, alter or lessen his claims to the protection of the law?” Brougham was certain that it should not, and he celebrated Smith’s dissenting connections. Mr. Smith . . . was . . . a faithful and pious minister of the Independents, that body so much to be respected . . . for the unshaken fortitude with 54 The British Zion which in all times, they have maintained their attachment to civil and religious liberty, and . . . the great doctrine of toleration.1 That Brougham should begin his defense of Smith with a rousing defense of religious liberty reflects both the significance of the issue in Whig and dissenting politics that gathered strength as the decade wore on and the meaningful role it played in shaping the antislavery debate and its relation to the missionary movement. Missionaries and their supporters opposed slavery in formidable numbers . Yet for fear of the reprisals of the West Indian planters and their allies in Britain, the missionary societies and their agents only hesitatingly participated in open agitation against slavery during the early nineteenth century . This chapter examines the advances of antislavery sentiments within the missionary movement in relation to the problems of religious liberty, the growth of the evangelical political lobby, and the influence of events both in the colonies and in the metropole. The religious public’s advocacy of antislavery emerged amid the social, political, and theological transformations explored in previous chapters. Here I hope to illustrate how evangelical nonconformists’ growing concerns for religious and civil rights, particularly in the context of missionary work, significantly promoted their participation in the agitation against slavery during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Chapters 1 and 2 examined the rise of evangelical religion and its impact upon British politics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The tensions of the revolutionary era, the dislocations of the early stages of industrialism, the growth of the middle classes all worked to advance the expansion of evangelical dissent and to raise the fears of the defenders of the Anglican constitution. Evangelical nonconformists mobilized themselves for political action in response to challenges to their civil and religious liberties. The concurrent expansion of British power and commerce overseas also elevated the religious public’s awareness of colonial questions, such as foreign missions and slavery. Opposition to the slave economy, and the slave trade in particular, first attracted the interest of evangelicals during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Organization of the initial campaigns against the slave trade relied heavily upon the participation of Quakers and evangelical Anglicans . While evangelical Dissenters lent considerable popular support to the movement, their active participation in antislavery activity matured only in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Within the antislavery movement manufacturers, merchants, and artisans took up leading roles on the The Missionary Movement 55 local and the national levels. The men behind the formation of the London Abolition Committee, which coordinated the 1788 and 1792 petition campaigns against the slave trade, were not merely “saints” but “practical men who understood about the market and consumer choice,” men who sought to “create a constituency for anti...