HEYRICK, Elizabeth.

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Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition; Or, an Inquiry Into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery. Third edition of this pamphlet condemning gradual abolition backed by Wilberforce as "the very master-piece of satanic policy" (p. 9). Originally published earlier the same year, this was the first edition to include an appendix with Thomas Clarkson's refutation of the claim that "slaves in the British colonies are better off than the labourers in Great Britain" (p. 25). Elizabeth Heyrick (1769-1831) was an abolitionist, philanthropist, and convert to Quakerism. Published anonymously, Heyrick's "anti-slavery works included appeals directed to British women and 'not to the Government, but to the People of England'" (ODNB). The best known, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition, sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Britain and the USA. The American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison later singled out Heyrick's contribution in a speech in Glasgow in 1833: "Who first gave the world the doctrine of immediate emancipation? It was a woman of England - Elizabeth Heyrick... the highly respected, talented and uncompromising friend of liberty" (Elizabeth Heyrick Society).

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