Mr. Knox hesitated a moment before saying, “This is something not much discussed, but the slave trade provides a steady stream of money back to England, a lot of it through Liverpool. The colonies in tropical climates must have workers to accommodate the extreme heat, and the British have found that a few places to buy slaves along the West African coast are as good as gold mines. The British elite pretend to disassociate themselves from slave traders, but they are deeply and eagerly involved in the accumulation of the profits, even as they look the other way.”

Mr. Knox had finally touched upon a subject that he usually avoided. With this one exception, he was able to correlate his political opinions with his interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. As an honest and devout man, he could not defend the involvement of his company in the slave traffic, but he attempted to rationalize what he was doing.

“We never buy slaves,” he explained, “but sometimes become the unwilling owner when we have to foreclose on a farmer and he has Negroes as part of his property. Also, when we resell a slave that we come to own, we are careful to have him resold by responsible dealers.”

Sophie asked, “But don’t you lend money to them to buy slaves?”

It was obvious that Mr. Knox was uncomfortable with the logic of his explanations. Although he couldn’t relate his actions to his basic religious standards, he was able to compare them favorably with those of other merchants.

“This is unavoidable when Negroes are necessary for the operation of a plantation. If there is any appreciable acreage, there is no way for a landowner to produce rice or tobacco, for instance, without a lot more labor than his own family can provide. We would have to go out of business if we were the only ones who refused to make loans to meet such a need, but we try to use our influence to minimize abuse by cruel and greedy owners, so it’s probably better for the slaves to have us make the loan than most of our competitors. Although they deny it by having different names as owners of the slave ships, some of our British competitors are even bringing blacks from Africa over here to be sold.”