"It appears first, that liberty is a natural, and government an adventitious right, because all men were originally free"
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Liberty gets framed here as biology, government as bookkeeping. Clarkson’s opening move is strategically simple: if freedom is “natural” and rule is “adventitious,” then the burden of proof flips. Power no longer presumes legitimacy; it has to earn it. The sentence reads like calm logic, but it’s a political weapon aimed at the most profitable hypocrisy of his era: empires preaching rights while running on bondage.
Clarkson, a central figure in British abolitionism, wrote in a culture where “rights” were being hotly renegotiated under the pressure of the American and French Revolutions, and where Britain’s parliamentary self-image coexisted with a vast slave economy. “All men were originally free” is less a neutral historical claim than a moral baseline: he’s invoking a pre-political condition that makes enslavement and hereditary domination look not merely harsh but unnatural - a violation of the world’s default settings.
The subtext is legal as much as ethical. By calling government “adventitious,” Clarkson suggests it’s contingent, made by humans, therefore alterable and accountable. That matters for abolition, because slavery often hid behind custom, commerce, and law. Clarkson’s phrasing denies those shelters. If liberty comes first, then any institution that cages it must justify itself as an exception, not a norm.
The elegance is its restraint. No thunder, no sentimentality - just a quiet reordering of premises designed to make the reader feel complicit if they keep treating oppression as business-as-usual.
Clarkson, a central figure in British abolitionism, wrote in a culture where “rights” were being hotly renegotiated under the pressure of the American and French Revolutions, and where Britain’s parliamentary self-image coexisted with a vast slave economy. “All men were originally free” is less a neutral historical claim than a moral baseline: he’s invoking a pre-political condition that makes enslavement and hereditary domination look not merely harsh but unnatural - a violation of the world’s default settings.
The subtext is legal as much as ethical. By calling government “adventitious,” Clarkson suggests it’s contingent, made by humans, therefore alterable and accountable. That matters for abolition, because slavery often hid behind custom, commerce, and law. Clarkson’s phrasing denies those shelters. If liberty comes first, then any institution that cages it must justify itself as an exception, not a norm.
The elegance is its restraint. No thunder, no sentimentality - just a quiet reordering of premises designed to make the reader feel complicit if they keep treating oppression as business-as-usual.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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