There is something unedifying in politicians apologising, without cost to themselves, for the sins of their predecessors while deploying all the black arts of their trade to suppress criticism of their own performance. The same goes for society at large. It would be more admirable for 21st-century Britain to be trying to imagine what our successors will see as incomprehensible moral blindness on our part than to be taking easy shots at the morality of two centuries ago. What will look as foul to Britons of 2306 as slavery does to us now? We don’t really want to know, because the answers might well be inconvenient. Abortion? The eating of animals? It is the people who get it right at the time who deserve celebration. Which is why we should honour the remarkable people who put Britain in the lead in suppressing first the slave trade and then slavery itself after thousands of years of acceptance of both by all significant societies in all continents.
- William Waldegrave
