The Rhetoric of Abolition

Rhetoric in “Occasional Discourse on the N- Question (Carlyle), and “The N- Question (Mill)”

For my own personal reasons, I will be replacing uses of the N-word with N- throughout this blog. I personally am not comfortable using this language, even in an academic sense.

Racial tension peaked in Britain in the early-mid 1800’s, following the abolition of slavery in Britain and British colonies in 1837. The text supplies that the end of the tariff on sugar in 1846 widely angered plantation owners in the mid-nineteenth century, sparking the voracious argument in Thomas Carlyle’s strongly-worded essay, “Occasional Discourse on the N- Question”. Throughout this essay Carlyle makes appeals to fellow ‘philanthropic’-minded people, repeatedly calling the readers his friends, suggesting they are of like mind. Further, Carlyle makes appeals of logic, using latin terms Adscripti glebae, and mentioning the dismal science of economics. Carlyle’s largest claims, however, seem drawn from pathos and emotion, seeking to frighten the reader with the threat of an unworked black man. Carlyle states that white British are not well-off, and are in fact starving, because black men aren’t working. He  raves,

“These two, Exeter Hall philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of black emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it - will give birth to progenies and prodigies: dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto! (Carlyle, 982)”

John Stuart Mill’s rebuttal to Thomas Carlyle’s essay was written to the editor of Fraser Magazine, titled “The N- Question”, written just a year later. Mill uses much the same terminology and rhetorical appeals as Carlyle, simply aims at a different group than Carlyle’s anti-abolitionist reader. But on top of Mill’s appeals to logic and Pathos, he also piles on a direct analysis of Carlyle’s own rhetoric. Mill immediately introduces Carlyle’s use of “The Destinies”, “immortal gods”, and “The Powers”. Mill then directly sets out to ‘correct’ Carlyle, as he says, by rebutting that the abolition movement was successful, not out of sentiment, but out of justice. He appeals to the reader’s conscience and idea of sin. 

“For nearly two centuries had n-, many thousands annually, been seized by force or treachery and worked to death, literally to death; for it was the received maxim, the acknowledged dictate of good economy, to wear them out quickly and import more. (Mill, 984)”

Mill then dissipates Carlyle’s rocky statement that black men are designed, or compelled to work. Carlyle had suggested that without labor, black men in British colonies wasted away, or gorged themselves on food they didn’t earn. Mill disputes this by suggesting that the way Carlyle defines labor is not good on its own, and not a pragmatic method to judge by. Mill supplants Carlyle’s attempts to connect emotionally with an audience of anti-abolitionists, while simultaneously making his own claims and criticisms of Carlyle’s audience. Slowly Mill works in words like ‘tyranny’, suggesting over time, so as not to shock his reader, that the concept or act of slavery is not as benevolent or harmless as Carlyle suggested.