Thoughts on Slavery and Cheap Sugar A Letter to the Members and Friends of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society

"Thoughts on Slavery and Cheap Sugar" by J. Ewing Ritchie is a pamphlet that examines slavery and the sugar trade in 19th-century Britain. Ritchie challenges the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to rethink how free trade affects the fight against slavery, arguing that supporting slave-produced sugar hurts both enslaved people and British workers. He criticizes policies that maintain a sugar monopoly, claiming they raise prices and sustain slavery abroad, proposing instead that reducing sugar import taxes could undermine slave labor through free market competition and benefit all. Ritchie's central argument focuses on the idea that economic policy and ethical considerations together are the strongest means of supporting emancipation.