8
●
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) VINDEX [PAINE, THOMAS.]
Old Truths
and Established Facts, Being an Answer to a Very New Pamphlet Indeed * A
Very New Pamphlet Indeed, being the Truth: Addressed top the People at Large
. . .
Two pamphlets : 13, [3 blank] pages; 15 pages, appearing in a complete copy of “The
Critical Review” in its original wrappers. Both pamphlets in their original state without
publisher’s imprint. Uniform 8vo’s, self-wrappers.
London, 1792
[1,000/1,500]
A SCARCE PSEUDONYMOUS REPLY TO
“
A VERY NEW PAMPHLET INDEED
,”
ATTRIBUTED
TO THOMAS PAINE
.
The “Very New Pamphlet” was an attack on William Wilberforce’s
1791 presentation before parliament, and the published “Abstract of the Evidence” of the same
year. Paine, writing, under the pseudonym of “Vindex” exposes the writer of the Very New
Pamphlet of trying to tie the Abolitionist movement to a specific political party and “Old
Jewry Society”—an obvious appeal to British anti-Semitism. At stake for the businessmen
behind the slave trader was the potential loss of seventy million pounds sterling a year as well
as 25,000 maritime jobs. The Very New Pamphlet also set out to prove that the slave trade
and slavery itself was not as bad as pictured by the abolitionists: “The Middle Passage has no
horrors and the Slaves are contented and cheerful on board.”(page 10). Both of these pamphlets
appeared inside periodical publications. As a result, neither bears a publisher’s imprint. Peter C.
Hogg The African Slave Trade and its Suppression, a Classified and Annotated Bibliography
(New York, Routledge, 2006) attributes this work to Paine, as does Halkett and Laing
Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Publications on the English Language
(Edinburgh, 1885 ), and Kress Library of Politics and Economics. Gregory Claeys, in a foot-
note to the first chapter of his Thomas Paine, Social and Political Thought, argues the point
from internal evidence. Ragatz, 565, 469; Sabin, 57147 (“attributed. to Paine”).
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