All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage (1737)

AUTHOR: Lay, Benjamin

KEYWORDS: Abolition, animals, food, slavery

SUMMARY (Aïcha Bouchelaghem & Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Lay launches a fierce attack on the institution and practice of slavery, particularly among Quakers. He frequently relies on figurative language taken from the realm of animals to describe the abominations of slavery. These include similes about buying and selling in the marketplace: slaves are “sold in the Market, for Term of Life, as Beasts in the Field” (15). He emphasizes the animality of the slave trade by asserting that “the nature of those Beasts, is in those Men, which do trade in Slaves; and much worse” (19). Lay compares slavery to certain kinds of animal behavior that are repugnant to humans, thus he likens slave-keepers to “the Dog, a ravenous Beast,” that likes “to lick up his Vomit, the filthiest and most unnatural Part or Sort of Excrement; and so is the Slave-keeping Practice, I am very certain” (142). He makes a point of stating that animals are often treated better than enslaved human beings: “of the abuses, miseries and Cruelties these miserable old worn out Slaves go through, no Tongue can express, starved with Hunger, perish with Cold, rot as they go, for want of every thing that is necessary for an Humane Creature; so that Dogs and Cats are much better taken care for” (92-93). Lay implicitly links Abolition to veg*ism when he presents them both as models of a temperate, ethical life:

I never read in History of the Waldenses, our first Reformers from Popery, that they kept any Slaves; I have understood they were very temperate, not eating Flesh, Milk or Eggs. Something like John's Locusts and Wild Honey; and Daniel and his three Friends Pulse and Water, Israel's 40 Years Eating Manna, and I think James our Lord's Brother according to Josephus, ate no Flesh, and many Thousands more, I believe, good Men and Women (61).