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

denied Fox’s claim for a high rate of death among African slaves in the Caribbean and
instead argued that more working class men in Britain died young “either by hazardous
employments, by working in infectious trades, or by extreme labour.” Calling English
miners “underground slaves,” she argued that if the labor conditions of these working
men were examined, their situation would be found “unenviable, even by the West Indian
slave.” By privileging white laborers and emphasizing the impact abolition would have
on white Britons, the female apologist placed her tract within an established rhetorical
tradition. 69
Emphasizing the importance of slave-goods, pro-slave trade writers created what
historian Brycchan Carey has described as a “hierarchy of suffering.” By diverting
attention to miners, for example, the anonymous author used a common rhetorical device
in pro-slave trade writing. Carey argues that child chimney sweeps and miners were
most often singled out for comparison with slaves because all three groups shared harsh
labor conditions, child labor, high mortality rates as well as having “black faces in
common.” Relief for child chimney sweeps was supported by abolitionists and pro-
slavery supporters alike; however, pro-slavery supporters used their concern for child
chimney sweeps to argue, like the female apologist, that “charity” should begin at
home. 70
In his Vindication, Hillier did not challenge the female author’s right to speak out
publicly against abstention from sugar; however, he did challenge her femininity and
69 An Answer to a Pamphlet Intituled [sic] An Address to the People of England against the Use of
West Indian Produce (Whitechapel: W. Moon, 1791), 4-7.
70 Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility, 130, 124, 127.
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