As an avowedly liberal newspaper committed to economic and individual freedom, the Manchester Guardian condemned slavery and supported its abolition. But it also excused enslavers and supported payment to compensate them for their loss of human “property”.
“The most important object of the statesman”, the paper announced in an 1828 editorial summarising its ideology, was “whatever is calculated … to aid the creation of wealth”. The paper vocally backed the campaign against slavery in the British empire – going so far as to encourage readers to sign petitions to this effect. But its stance on the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act insisted on the “justice” of a £20m payment to enslavers – which would be worth billions today – as well as the requirement that enslaved Africans served additional years in bondage as apprentices to their erstwhile owners.
The paper’s editorial columns, which expressed the views of its proprietor – and his ties to the cotton trade – deplored the existence of slavery in the United States, but disapproved of any radical prescriptions to end it. The Manchester Guardian did not support slavery in the American south, but regarded the civil war as an effort by the overbearing north to prevent the independence of the Confederate states – a war whose true motive, it claimed, had nothing to do with slavery. Above all, the paper resented and disputed the implication that any enemy of slavery should give unqualified support to the northern side.
