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r > ETE : N 4 CE OF LCTCKE AGAINST LORD ELBON . To the Editor of the Mont lily Repositoiy . Sir ., I was very sorry to observe , that a learned Peer , during the late debate in the House of Lords on the abolition of the Slave Trade , had employed the authority of Mr . Locke to justify the continuance of such a nefarious traffic . As you devoted several pages of your former volume to his memory , I beg leave to propose to you some u historic doubts" as to the propriety with which Lord Eldon introduced his name upon that occasion ,, I am more inclined to this attempt , as , judging from the very short report of the debate in the newspapers , Lord Holland , on whom the philanthropic mantle of his departed
relation appears to have descended entire , was not fully informed upon the point . His Lordship seemed to admit that Mr Locke had given an opinion in favour of the Slave Trade , though he took away tbe whole weight of his authority , as applying to our times * by shewing the titter ignorance on the subject which , till the late discussions , generally prevailed .
After an attentive examination of Mr . Locke ' s works , such as he presented them , by his will , to the University of Oxford , and his posthumous works , first added to the folio editions , I cannQt find a syllable respecting negro slavery 3 nor any doctrine maintained which can be even tortured into an approbation of it . The only mention of the subject occurs in an 8 vo . volume , published ( in 1720 , sixteen years after his decease , entitled
c A Collection of several Pieces of Mr , John Locke , never before printed , or not extant in his Works / ' The first of these pieces is , " The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina , " concerning which the editor of the volume , Mr . Des Maizeaux , says , that " the other proprietors desired Lord Ashley , afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury , to draw up the laws necessary for the establishment of their nevv colony ; to which he the more readily consented , because he relied on the assistance of Mr . Locke . " He adds , that the Constitutions are " printed from Mr . Locke ' s copy , wherein are several amendments made with his own hand , and which he presented as a work of his to one of his friends , " from whom Mr . Des Maizeaux professes to have received it .
Two or three of these One-hundred-an < l-twenty Constitutions , and indeed the spirit of a great part of the whole , are certainly yery unworthy of the author of the 4 < Treatises of Govern - ment , '* We shojuld ^ ather have expected them from tPie authef
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1807, page 83, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2377/page/27/
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