George Wallace and Britain’s First Abolitionist Publication (1760)

Abstract This article offers an in-depth analysis of a little-known work, George Wallace’s A s ystem of the principles of the law of Scotland (1760), which contains the first text in Britain that explicitly advocated total and immediate abolition of both slavery and the slave trade. Wallace’s demand was that the Scottish court immediately recognize the inalienable natural liberty of any person arriving from the American colonies, and he thus anticipated by over a decade the first court cases in Britain which did precisely that. But Wallace went even further, drawing on a wide range of ideas and theories to reject any possible justification for slavery in any form. This article discusses the ways in which he constructed his novel philosophical, political, and legal arguments, the intellectual context of his uncompromising antislavery position, and the surprisingly wide reception of his now-forgotten work. It focuses on Wallace’s nuanced engagements with his multiple sources, including his debts to Montesquieu and to his father, Robert Wallace, a freethinking Church of Scotland minister. Close attention is given to George Wallace’s radical appropriation of Roman law, as well as the laws of nature and nations – traditions that had previously been used to justify, rather than challenge, slavery.