THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

sugar at the height of the boycott. 23 In January 1792, Clarkson wrote and circulated a
private letter acknowledging the influence of Fox’s tract and requesting Josiah
Wedgwood arrange for the printing of another 1000 copies of the pamphlet. “I have seen
the effects of the work in the course of my travels, and I am so convinced that the like
effects will be produced upon others if it still be more circulated,” he told Wedgwood.
Clarkson also suggested that abstention might lead to more signatures on petitions. 24
Even Fox’s critics noted the rapid dissemination of the Address. As one author wrote,
“this pamphlet claims particular attention [for] the rapid and extraordinary manner in
which it has been circulated in all parts of the kingdom.” 25
Historians acknowledge Fox’s influence on the eighteenth-century abstention
movement; however, often missing from their analyses is any mention of the
circumstances that brought his pamphlet to print. 26 In a partnership of abolitionist elite
and radical outsider, the first four editions of Fox’s pamphlet were printed and sold by
Quaker James Phillips, printer for the London Committee, and Baptist Martha Gurney,
London’s only female dissenting printer.
23 Clarkson, History, II: 349-350. Methodist Samuel Bradburn estimated that more than 400,000
people participated in the boycott. Samuel Bradburn, An Address to the People Called Methodists
Concerning the Evil of Encouraging the Slave Trade (Manchester: T. Harper, Smithy-Door, 1792).
24 As quoted in Earl Leslie Griggs, Thomas Clarkson: The Friend of Slaves (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 1938), 69; J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The
Moblisation of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade, 1787-1807 (Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 1988), 58.
In this same letter, Clarkson noted that sugar revenue was down ₤200,000. In reply, Wedgwood proposed
printing 2000 copies and adding a woodcut of the seal of the kneeling slave. Wedgwood also offered to
pay the cost of preparing the print.
25 Strictures on an Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from
West-India Sugar and Rum (London: T. Boosey, 1792), 3.
26
Timothy Whelan’s article is a notable exception. See Whelan, “William Fox, Martha Gurney,
and Radical Discourse,” 397-411.
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