“Emancipate Your Colonies!” (1793) by Jeremy Bentham

In 1793, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, availing himself of his privileges as a French citizen, a title conferred upon him the previous year by the National Assembly, privately printed a pamphlet entitled Jeremy Bentham to the National Convention of France. It concerned the colonial question, with reference in particular to America and the French West Indies, expressing Bentham's deep conviction that colonies are of little or no utility to their mother country.

Jeremy Bentham was forever petitioning governments and well-connected people to adopt his reform proposals, whether they were for prison reform or the independence of France’s colonies. It is hard to tell what the French politicians thought of this tirade but it is amusing to read.

Bentham had a strong dislike of the aristocrats in England and France who monopolised politics and cloaked his arguments in a thinly disguised theory of class (a view also adopted by his followers James Mill and other members of the Philosophic radicals). Abominations are not just abominations, but “aristocratical abominations”:

"The attempt, I say, is iniquitous: it is an aristocratical abomination: it is a cluster of aristocratical abominations: it is iniquitous towards them; but much more as among yourselves..."

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Please read the text before the discussion:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Emancipate_your_colonies!