I tried the argument that to have some wealth and power, they had to do what the economy dictated in order to compete with those with slaves. I pointed out their disapproval for the practice and that they got the tools in place in the constitution to eventually end the practice.
It was like talking to a brick wall.
“I tried the argument that to have some wealth and power, they had to do what the economy dictated in order to compete with those with slaves.”
That’s not the argument I’d make. It’s more a matter that that’s the life they were born into. They were aristocrats, and there’s an understanding amongst those people that you carry on the family honor. That you owe a debt to your forebears and your progeny to maintain the fortune. You can, and people did, divest yourself of the slaves because of the moral stain involved. But it’s a big move, and unsurprisingly they didn’t do it lightly, despite their otherwise truly liberal (in the good, old sense) leanings.
Imagine inheriting millions of dollars from your father, whose father’s father, you discover, earned it from—I don’t know—beating it out of little children. Or whatever. You’d like to say you’d give it away to charity, but would you? Even without the aristocratic principle of a bond between generations (if that principle actually exists), do people sacrifice wealth out of general principle?
If Prince William Windsor decided, along with most moderns, that monarchy is either unecessary or positively bad, does he abdicate the throne? Does he give up not only vast personal wealth and power, but also the whole long line of Windsors, Hanoverians, Stuarts, Tudors, and Platagenets before him, but also who knows how many people after them, on a personal whim?
It’s not so easy.