Last post I mentioned how the classical liberal was compelled by ideology to reject exclusionary race policies in Australia. Along with many Christian activists the principles of classical liberalism was also opposed to slavery. Adam Smith makes his economic case against it in The Wealth of Nations. Specifically, that slavery is economically inefficient because the slaves have no incentive to work hard or innovate since they can not keep anything for themselves. Smith also morally condemns slavery and derides the owners of slaves in both TWN and The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
But even more of note is the story of John Bright. Bright was a champion of free trade, leading opponents of the early 19th century British Corn Laws that sort to protect British cereal produces from foreign sources. Such protection benefited the wealthy cereal producing Aristocracy by imposing steep import duties that increased their profits and power but made bread more expensive for the masses. These laws were said to be the last remnants of British mercantilism before its passageway into full capitalism. In a display of just how motivated for the poor Bright was, here are the words of fellow Corn Law fighter Richard Cobden to Bright on the death of his first wife
There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is past I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.
Such should demolish the mendacious claim that capitalists only care about the rich, likewise Adam Smith's TWN's title is dedicated mostly to the poor. Smith writes
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Bright not only fought for economic freedom, he was also the leading British champion against American slavery. Biographer Bill Cash writes
Bright was the leading advocate in Britain against slavery throughout the American Civil War and who was highly esteemed by Abraham Lincoln for his advocacy in the run up to the Emancipation Proclamation – which had its 150th anniversary on 1 January, 2013.Bright was also a huge intellectual and motivational influence on Abraham Lincoln and it was Bright more than anyone that prevented war between Britain and the US during the Civil War. I'll let Cash tell the rest of the story
It was testimony to Bright’s influence that Shuyler Colfax (who, as those who have watched the film will have seen for themselves voted for the constitutional amendment in 1865) and Henry Janney – both of whom were confidants of Lincoln – wrote to Bright after the assassination telling him that his portrait and only his portrait was in President Lincoln’s reception room. Lincoln had sent two portraits of himself to Bright, and of the two portraits hanging in Lincoln’s own office, one was of Bright...
...In 1863, Bright defeated a resolution in the House of Commons for an alliance between Britain, the Emperor Napoleon II of France, and the southern Confederate states against the North, as well as ditching the £16 million support raised in England to support the South – the equivalent today of $1.7 billion (estimated by reference to the UK retail price index) – with the British Navy ruling the waves, this undoubtedly would have tipped the balance against the North, particularly given the support of Prime Minister Palmerston, Gladstone and Russell for the South at that time.So Britain's greatest champion for a free economy was also Britain's greatest enemy of American slavery. Hardly something you would expect to be true if the early capitalist industrial countries were built on the backs of slaves or that capitalism only served the rich few.
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