Emancipation Unmask'd In A Letter To The Right Honourable The Earl Of Aberdeen, Secretary Of State For The Colonies. [Bridges, Rev. George Wilson]

28pp. Stitched, as issued. A little creased and somewhat toned and marked, especially at front and end, and to fore-edges. Small marginal loss to final leaf. An impassioned, caustic and colonial response the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, by Rev. George W. Bridges (1788-1863), Anglican clergyman, rector of Mandeville, Jamaica, opponent of missionaries and defender of slavery, best known for his partially libellous The Annals of Jamaica (London, 1828). The Annals, published when abolition was increasingly advocated by an evangelical movement in Britain, represented the minority viewpoint of a white colonist in the West Indies - himself the owner of several slaves - outnumbered by enslaved and free black residents, and warned of inevitable ruin for Jamaica in the event of the Anti-Slavery Society securing the abolition of the practice. Emancipation Unmask'd, published in the wake of that abolition, and the 1831-2 Jamaican revolt, represents his final attempt at securing colonial supremacy over the island and its newly-emancipated majority. Whilst often making arguments referencing political economy, the previous writings of latter-day abolitionists such as Henry Brougham, and practicalities of colonial security, the work is entirely imbued with diabolical undertones, and often explicit white supremacism of wholly racist foundations. It should be no surprise, therefore, that Bridges' opposed apprenticeship and encourages extensive immigration from 'the over-burthened parishes and half-starving communities of Great Britain' via the 'establishment of an Emigration Company', leading to 'a permanent increasing class of labourers, producing an agricultural population, and eventually a tenantry, drawing ample measures from a country where riches are unrivalled.' Rare. OCLC and COPAC together locates just five institutional copies in the UK (BL, Cambridge, Glasgow, Southampton and St. Andrews), and a single copy elsewhere (Jamaica). Sabin 7822. Size: 8vo