Autobiography of Edward Gibbon : as originally edited by Lord Sheffield / with an introduction by J.B. Bury.

  • Edward Gibbon
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Autobiography of Edward Gibbon : as originally edited by Lord Sheffield / with an introduction by J.B. Bury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    humanity ever slumber unless when women are ravished or the Christians persecuted.’ The criticism is hardly fair. All cruelty and persecution were odious to Gibbon, and even in the sixteenth chapter, to which it specially refers, he makes this perfectly plain. At the same time, he does assume a pointed indifference to the sufferings of the Christians ; and lets us see that he could not help feeling a wicked satisfaction that the Christians who have been merciless in plaguing infidels should themselves have been plagued. He cannot be acquitted of sometimes affecting cynicism ; but it must be remembered that it was not incumbent on him to express horror or indignation on every occasion that he had to commemorate acts of violence or inhumanity. He displays his detestation of the murder of Hypatia ; he might merely have recorded the fact, if it had not inflicted ‘ an indelible stain on the character and religion ’ of a Christian bishop ; but if he had made no comment, it would not be fair to say that his humanity slumbered. His humanity is shown by his horror of * the abomi¬ nable slave-trade ’. His friend, Lord Sheffield, was opposed to its abolition, and published a tract on the subject. Gibbon wrote to him: ‘You have such a knack of turning a nation that I am afraid you will triumph (perhaps by the force of argument) over justice and humanity. But do you not expect to work at Beelzebub’s sugar plantations in the infernal regions, under the tender government of a negro-driver ? ’ Two years later, when the gradual abolition of the trade was voted in the House (1792), he wrote more coolly, showing his dread of the Revolution : ‘ In the slave question you triumphed last session ; in this you have been defeated. What is the cause of the alteration ? If it proceeded only from an impulse of humanity, I cannot be displeased, even with an error ; since it is very likely that my own vote (had I possessed one) would have been added to the Majority. But in this rage against slavery, in the numerous petitions against the Slave-trade, was there no leaven of new
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