It is not the state of slavery so much as the process of enslavement that is intolerable: and it is worth noting that the European slave trade was principally for the transport of people already enslaved.In Liberia, where they have been put in political power, they have erected a rigid racial bar between the immigrant and the aboriginal Negroes, and have introduced a system of forced labour more onerous than the slavery from which they were themselves freed. They have proved quite unfit for retail trade: they are clumsy mechanics, a superstitious and excitable riff-raff hanging round the rum shops and staring listlessly at the Chinese, Madeiran and East Indian immigrants, who outstrip them in every branch of life. The sugar plantations have been ruined or mechanized, and the Negroes, instead of following the example of the indentured coolies and becoming small proprietors, working long hours in the country, drift to the intermittent employment of the towns. It is an unexpected development from the simple, woolly-headed, golden-hearted Bible-reading old darky that was held up as an example to European subscribers – the good old Uncle Tom who was to grow in the air of freedom into an educated, prudent and pious family man and citizen. But it is not too much to say that in general character the descendants of the Negro slaves in the British Empire are a thriftless and dissolute lot.

There are always honourable exceptions in any general racial condemnation, and, heaven knows, the white people of the north have not made such a success of their own civilization that they can afford any extravagance of phrase.'Was He Right to Free the Slaves?', The Daily Express (15 July 1933), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed.It depended on all those fallacies that are being abandoned today: the idea of a perfectible evolutionary man, of a responsible democratic voter, of the beneficial effect of mechanization, and, above all, on sentimental belief in the basic sweetness of human nature. None of the great movements of the nineteenth century is more typical of its age than that for the freeing of the slaves.1.9 The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957).

Evelyn waugh 1938