This move by the Church of England is a small step in the right direction, but there is a long way to go (C of E setting up £100m fund to ‘address past wrongs’ of slave trade links, 10 January).
The £100m is chickenfeed compared with the modern value of the money that the report has identified as coming from the profits of investments in the South Sea Company. In the period 1708–93, that income amounted to £633,946. By the method the report used to convert contemporary sums into modern-day terms, today’s value of this would be £1,361,000,000.
