An Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question

Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question is an essay written by Thomas Carlyle. It was first published in Fraiser's Magazine of London in 1849 and was reprinted in a pamphlet of the same name in 1853. It was the spark of the Carlyle-Mill Negro Question Debate between Carlyle and John Stewart Mill.

Origins

Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question began as a devils advocate work with the aim of challenging what Carlyle perceived to be a hypercritical philanthropic movement for the emancipation of West Indian slaves. In its original publication Carlyle presented it as a speech “delivered by we know not whom” written down by an unreliable reporter by the name of Philm McQuirk. The manuscript was sold to the publisher by McQuirk's landlady in lieu of unpaid rent - she found it lying in his room after he ran off. When he stated in his introduction,“you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and you will not, in the least, like it,”it seems Carlyle intended the reader to be aware of the dubious value of the work.

The bigger question is what the Nigger Question is really about. The freedom of all men. While it is racist with a line referring to the West Indies as “a black Ireland." it is not simply about the freedom of black people but about the freedom of all people and in Carlyle's mind the impossibility of that. The Nigger Question was written in 1849 when the infant mortality rate for working class people living in Manchester, England was around 50% for children under five years old. Carlyle stated that “British whites are rather badly off-several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual famine.” The infant mortality rate recorded for southern slaves in mainland America was 48%. The infant mortality rate among slaves in the West Indies is difficult to determine. Although black people in the West Indies were classed as slaves, many poor white people in England lived the lives of slaves but were classified as free. Poor white children worked in mills from the age of six and huge numbers of white people lived in desperate poverty. While the British ruling class did little to address the poverty on their doorstep, they turned en masse against the slavery of black Africans in the West Indies. It was against this background that Carlyle wrote the deeply unpopular Nigger Question.

In its 1849 publication a fictitious speaker, who seems to be a caricature of a racist, makes various controversial points ranging from downright racist insults about what he thinks about the appearance and intelligence of black Africans all the way through to radical alternative solutions to the slavery problem. These are probably opinions that Carlyle has gathered from the British under-class and upper-class, plantation owners, like his friend John Stirling and some of the remaining pro slavery elite he met in London all fused into one. It brings the contemporary reader into the feelings and controversies of the time. The present day reader might find some of the facts and figures incredible. The speaker suggests that the conditions on most slave ships are not nearly as awful as the worst reported and that many countries aside from Britain are involved in the slave trade and trying to stop it would be impossible. Additionally, rather than simply setting slaves free into a (capitalist) world of which they have little understanding, slave owners should be obliged to look after their slaves like a (lesser) member of their family, by caring for them into old age. This idea was well discussed at the time and is the “oft-fabled poetic legend” summarily dismissed in the opening chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabin:

“Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow—the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master,—so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil,—so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.” (Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852)

Throughout the (imaginary) delivery of the speech to the public, McQuirk reports that members of the audience got up and left in disgust suggesting that Carlyle well knew how the essay would be received. Just as he expected, the work met with widespread disapproval and in the minds of many people Carlyle's reputation was forever tarnished. Carlyle's closest friends criticized him for his stand but rather than back down he grew contrary and isolated. In later publications the McQuirk framework was entirely omitted and Carlyle expressed the opinions as if they were his own.

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/negroquest.htm

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm

http://www.freeessays.cc/db/18/ehc33.shtml

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/adw03/peel/p-health/pubheal.htm

http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/history/victorian/Victorian1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei