Thomas Moody (British Army officer)

In character, Moody was obsessed with social hierarchy, discipline, and surveillance:[1] with what he termed 'the bonds of respect and subordination'.[1]

Moody was a privately-tutored polymath who read in several languages, and in diverse subjects, including geopolitics, climatology, sociology, economics, philosophy, history, and physics.[8] Moody was described, in 1821, by Viscount Combermere, to whom he served as aide-de-camp from 1817 to 1820, as 'a very intelligent person'.[9] His reading included the works of Montesquieu; William Petty; William Robertson; Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (whom he knew personally, and of whom he was a fervent admirer);[8]Johannes van den Bosch; and those of the Africans Toussaint Louverture and Henri Christophe.[1] He was also influenced by the African Jean-Pierre Boyer, the President of Haiti.[1] He disputed the economic philosophy of James Mill, that of John Ramsay McCulloch, and that of Adam Smith, and admired the philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Say.[8] Moody was also extensively read in abolitionist literature.[8] Moody has been described by 20th century historian D. J. Murray as 'an expert on West Indian affairs in general' [9] who 'helped to provide an understanding in the [Colonial] Office of problems the existence of which was barely comprehended, [and] raised fundamental questions and explained the wider implications of the Government's course of action'.[9]

Moody was a Freemason and was described by Sir Humphrey Fleming Senhouse as 'an [freemasonic] Officer of high character and reputation'.[10] Moody was incorporated in diverse factions of the London establishment.[8] Inside the Colonial Office, Moody had 'all its archives open to him'.[11] Moody's official title in the Colonial Office was 'Home Secretary for Foreign Parliamentary Commissioners'.[9] Moody was a friend of the President of Tortola, the island on which the commissioners were to commence their investigations.[1] In the City of London, Moody was an Advisor to the East India Company; a Director of the Crown Life Assurance Company, of 33 Bridge Street, Blackfriars;[12] and a Director of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company, of 5 Copthall Court, City of London.[13] He was a member of the Political Economy Club, at which he disputed with both James Mill and John Ramsay McCulloch, and at which he admired the philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Say.[8] Moody’s other friends included Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, with whom he had an extensive private correspondence,[8] and after whom he named one of his sons;[6] Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, after whom he named another of his sons;[14] Sir James Leith, after whom he named another of his sons;[15] Sir Humphrey Fleming Senhouse;[10] Charles-Augustin de Coulomb;[8] James Macqueen;[11] James Mangles;[16] Thomas Hyde Villiers;[17] and Sir James Stirling.[18][19]

Moody arrived in Barbados in 1797,[20] to serve as mathematics master,[1][20] writing master,[20] and Assistant Headmaster,[21] of Codrington College, at which he served until 1805.[22][9] In these positions, Moody demonstrated such an aptitude for mathematics that Lord Seaforth, the British General in Barbados, granted Moody his patronage,[20] and procured for Moody a direct commission in the Royal Engineers,[20] which Moody entered as a Lieutenant on 1 July 1806.[1][23] Moody's first duty was to administer the Office of Ordinance in Demerara,[1] and he was subsequently promoted to the Government Secretaryships of Demerara and Berbice, as which he served for three years.[9] He proceeded, subsequently, to distinguish himself in the Napoleonic Wars.[20] Moody was promoted to Second Captain on 1 May 1811; to Captain on 20 December 1814; and to Brevet Major on 23 May 1816.[23] Thomas was put on half-pay by the Army, in 1815, at the cessation of the Napoleonic Wars, in which he had served with distinction:[20] subsequently, he spent one year in Guiana as an attorney for Wolfert Katz, who was the wealthiest planter in the colony.[1]

Moody was recruited into the Royal Engineers by Lord Seaforth

Moody served as aide-de-camp to Sir James Leith,[20][24] who was Governor of Barbados from May 1815 to October 1816,[24][9] and as Superintendent of the Crown Plantations in Guadeloupe.[1][9] Moody named his son James Leith Moody after Leith, of whom he was a fervent admirer.[15] During his service as aide-de-camp to Leith, Thomas Moody was involved in the successful Invasion of Guadeloupe (1815), for which he was subsequently knighted, in 1820, by Louis XVIII, in the Order of Military Merit.[25][26] Moody also served as aide-de-camp to both the President of Tortola; and to Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere,[9] who was Governor of Barbados from 1817 to 1820,[9] after whom Moody named one of his sons.[23][27][20] On the cessation of his service to Viscount Combermere, Moody was described by Viscount Combermere, in a letter from the same to Sir Robert Wilmot Horton that be dated 15 December 1821, as '[a] very intelligent person, and having been employed in various situations, these gave him opportunities of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the local details, etc. of those islands and Colonies [the West Indies], and a great deal of useful information may be collected from him'.[9] In 1816, Moody was responsible for the transfer of groups of rescued Africans to the Crown estates in Guadeloupe. Moody believed that rescued Africans made an 'extremely useful' contribution to the British Empire.[1] His competent performance in this appointment may have contributed to his subsequent appointment as a Parliamentary Commissioner on Slavery.[1]

Moody owned plantations in Barbados by 1816, but he supported the Barbados Slave Rebellions of September and October -1816, which he witnessed,[28] and which he described as an attempt 'by the mass of the slaves... to gain independence'.[29] Thomas owned extensive plantations and estates in the Caribbean, including in Barbados,[29][1] Guiana, Demerara, Berbice, and Tortola. He was a claimant on insolvent estates in Berbice in 1827 (The Times, 4 April 1827, p. 4)[30] and was awarded the compensation for one enslaved person in British Guiana.[30]

Moody received a knighthood in the French Order of Military Merit

In 1820, Moody was knighted by Louis XVIII in the Order of Military Merit for defending the French colony of Guadeloupe. He was permitted by George IV to wear the Cross of the Order whilst in Britain, but not to use the title 'Sir'.[25][26] Moody received the rank of Major in the British Army for his services in conflicts in the West Indies.[26]

In 1821, William Wilberforce proposed to the House of Commons the creation a Commission to investigate the condition of slaves in the West Indies due to omnipresent reports that the Slave Trade Act 1807, which had made the trade of slaves illegal, was being universally violated by wealthy plantation owners, who were redesignating their slaves as 'apprentices' and continuing to trade.[31][32] There were to be two commissioners who were to report to Lord Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Moody and John Dougan (1765-1826) volunteered for each of the commissionerships and were selected by Bathurst.[1][9] In April 1824, Moody received the official title of 'Home Secretary for Foreign Parliamentary Commissioners'.[9] Moody himself contended that this title were misleading: he wrote in a letter to Robert Hay, of 14 July 1828, 'it is well known... that my real duties have been more connected with the West India Department, the Colonial Finance Accounts, and the correspondence and details relative to emigration'.[9] Moody was a friend of the President of Tortola, the island on which the commissioners were to commence their investigations.[1]

Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, Undersecretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Moody, 'I do not know any man more competent (if so competent) to direct the application of labour as yourself'.[9] Moody had already vastly improved the efficacy of the Colonial Office in London:[9] he had improved the efficacy of the annual Blue Books,[9] which had been introduced in 1821,[33] and introduced, as his own invention, new Brown Books in which further statistical information from every colony was entered every six months for perusal by the London Colonial Office.[9] The subjects of the analyses composed by Moody for the Colonial Office included, 'The duties and means of increasing the utility of naval officers in the West Indies'; the history of the Crown Estates of Berbice; and the conditions of labour on the sugar plantations of the West Indies'.[9] Moody was employed to compose works of journalism - under the pseudonym 'Vindex', which was also used by others in the Colonial Office - that justified the Government's West Indian policy:[9] these works included the 1825, Considerations in Defence of the Orders in Council for the Melioration of Slavery in Trinidad,[9] the copy of which presently in the library of the Royal Commonwealth Society was formerly in the Colonial Office.[9] Historian D. J. Murray provides a synopsis of Moody's contribution to the London Colonial Office prior to Moody's appointment to the Commission on Slavery: 'He [Moody] helped to provide an understanding in the Office of problems the existence of which was barely comprehended, [and] he raised fundamental questions and explained the wider implications of the Government's course of action'.[9] Moody considered his function to be to identify factual evidence that would enable Lord Bathurst and Wilmot Horton to make accurate decisions, and Moody was contemptuous of the prevalence of unproven assertions in sociopolitical discourse:[9] Moody wrote, on 3 July 1826, 'It is of infinitely great importance for Lord Bathurst to have laid before him clear statements of facts rather than mere opinions... It is so much easier to give an opinion than to describe carefully and accurately a tedious series of facts. It is, however, from these facts only that Lord Bathurst can form his own principles practically to guide his judgment'.[9] Moody contention that only factual evidence could be a valid determiner of a practice, and that opinion was to be rejected, was common to his protégé James Stephen.[34]

Dougan was the son of an owner of sugar plantations on Demerara: Dougan stated, 'all my nearest relations and friends were either Planters or Owners of slaves'.[1] Dougan had lived on Tortola, where he worked as a merchant, privateer, Prize Agent for the Royal Navy, and Colonial administrator.[1] Dougan was the uncle of Moody's wife,[1] Martha Clement,[30] and the son of a slave-plantation owner.[1] Dougan was influenced by the zealous idealism of Whig agitators in England, such as the Quaker John Barton,[31][32][35][36] and by the Clapham Sect, with which he was associated.[8] Moody, in contradistinction, was influenced by Montesquieu, William Petty, William Robertson, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Johannes van den Bosch, and by the Africans Toussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, and Jean-Pierre Boyer, the President of Haiti.[1] Moody was also extensively read in abolitionist literature,[8] and had noted that Stephen's recommendation, in 1802, of a period of indenture had provided the basis for both the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and for the Orders in Council.[8]

Moody and Dougan arrived on Tortola in May 1822.[1] Moody objected to the interview process recommended by the Commission, in which masters and apprentices were supposed to be interviewed together, because he thought that it were 'calculated to excite complaints of the servant against the master'.[1] Among the ex-slaverowners interviewed by Moody was Abraham Mendes Belisario, the Deputy Provost Marshal of Tortola, who possessed 17 African apprentices.[1] As a consequence of the unreliability of the reports of apprentices that such masters provided, which were known as 'Characters' of apprentices, Moody insisted that such reports should not be heard, nor quoted in the official Commission report, but that he and Dougan, the Commissioners, should specify only their own opinions of the masters of the apprentices.[1]

The Commissioners recorded that many black African apprentices were employed by free black Africans.[1] When ‘apprentices’ employed by H. C. Maclean, a prosperous merchant who served as Comptroller of the Customs on Tortola, complained to the Commission, Macclean had them beaten. Moody refused to criticise Macclean: Dougan objected to Moody's refusal, but received no sympathy amongst the Colonial administration of the islands. This event provoked a spiteful feud between Dougan and Moody: Dougan complained about the 'state of Irritation and Disunion of the Commission'.[1] Dougan attempted to reconcile himself with Moody, but Moody refused to forgive him, and, as a consequence, Dougan was compelled to resign from the Commission,[1] in June 1822, to return to England, and to submit his report to the House of Commons in private.[32] In this report, dated 20 December 1823, Dougan contends that "free labour in the West Indies is preferable to compulsory labour".[31] On his resignation, Dougan stated that '[the] repeated attacks, the State of Irritation of Major Moody's Mind, and all hopes of Conciliation [were] ended': however, their 'protracted and unpleasant dispute' continued even after the death of Dougan,[1] in 1826, subsequent to which his efforts for reform were continued by his daughter, Mary,[32] between whom and Moody the feud continued.[1]

In 1824, Moody's friend Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, forwarded one of Moody's papers to George Canning, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.[8] Subsequently, in 1825, Moody returned to London and presented to the House of Commons an exposition of the reasons for his refusal to sign the report prepared by Dougan in Tortola, in addition to the official Commission report,[37] which he had completed on his own, without Dougan,[1] and which he submitted without the consent of Dougan,[1] that is dated 2 March 1825,[37] and consists of over 200 pages.[1] Moody's official Commission report contends that "without some species of coercion African labour would be worthless".[1][37] The Whig Lord Macaulay described Moody's report as 'in substance, a defence of West Indian slavery', but Moody described his theories as a 'Philosophy of Labour',[38] and himself as a 'practical philanthropist'.[1] Lord Macaulay's description is inaccurate because, although Moody desired the employment of Africans, Moody did not desire their employment under conditions of enslavement:[8] indeed, Moody had supported the Barbados Slave Rebellions of September and October 1816, despite owning plantations in Barbados.[29] Moody was influenced by the theory of the climatological determination of the human constitution that was advocated by Montesquieu, and contended that it were a 'physical fact' that only blacks possessed the ability to perform agricultural labour in the 'torrid zone'.[1][8] Moody was also extensively read in abolitionist literature.[8]

Moody's ultimate conclusion was that the indentured Africans in the West Indies should be taken back to West Africa.[1]

Moody submitted a second report, also of over 200 pages, in 1826.[1] Moody's philosophy also analysed Dutch agricultural colonies, the Bengal peasantry, slavery in India, prostitution in Sierra Leone, slavery in the United States, and the American Colonization Society for African-American settlement in West Africa.[8]

Moody's philosophy, which incorporated innumerable scholarly references,[8] won the advocacy of the director of the Commission, Lord Bathurst, and of his Under-Secretary, Sir Robert Wilmot Horton,[1] with whom Moody had an extensive private correspondence;[8] of the Tories; and of the advocates of Britain's colonial empire: Parliament declared Moody's ‘great experience in the control of labour, both slave and free, both African and European, in garrison, and in the field’,[39] and his notions were highly influential in London society in its entirety.[8] Moody was incorporated in diverse factions of the London establishment.[8] Inside the Colonial Office, Moody had 'all its archives open to him'.[11] Moody was a friend of the geographer James Macqueen, to whom he provided inside information, which Macqueen would not disclose, throughout the period 1824 - 1828.[11] Moody was a member of the Political Economy Club, at which he disputed with both James Mill and John Ramsay McCulloch, and at which he stated his admiration for the philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Say.[8] Moody maintained an extensive private correspondence with Sir Robert Wilmot Horton,[8] (after whom he named one of his sons), and another with Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham (after whom he named another of his sons), before he returned to the West Indies.[14] In the City of London, Moody was an Advisor to the East India Company; a Director of the Crown Life Assurance Company, of 33 Bridge Street, Blackfriars;[12] and a Director of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company, of 5 Copthall Court, City of London.[13] Subsequent to the publication of his reports, Moody became increasingly close to James Mangles, the Director of the East India Company, to whom he subsequently proffered advice regarding the settlement of the Swan River Colony at minimal cost to the British Government.[16] However, Moody's report provoked the Whigs, evangelicals, and abolitionists to ire.[1][8] Zachary Macaulay and other abolitionists condemned Moody's philosophy in the Anti-Slavery Reporter,[1][30] and Lord Macaulay cited Moody's reports in an anti-slavery essay that was published in the Edinburgh Review in 1827.[1] Moody's contentions and his style of expression were condemned by Lord Macaulay,[40] and in a series of anonymous letters to the Morning Chronicle newspaper, all which provoked extensive defensive refutations from Moody.[1] Throughout the period in which London political society responded to his reports, Moody maintained a continuous dialogue with the Colonial Office, in which he vigorously refuted the criticisms of his reports, and repudiated the doctrines of his critics in private correspondences and in the newspapers.[8] Moody's friends Sir Robert Wilmot Horton and Thomas Hyde Villiers MP also wrote articles - under the pseudonym 'Vindex', which Moody had also used - to The Star newspaper, in which they refuted the objections that others had made to Moody's philosophy and defended Government policy.[17][9] Moody proceeded to testify before the Privy Council, in defence of Government policy, in 1827[9] and in 1828.[17] Moody's report influenced Lord Bathurst; Moody's protégé James Stephen; and Moody's successor Sir Henry Taylor.[17] Historian D. J. Murray contends that Hyde Villiers and Taylor were merely advisors, and not experts like Moody and Stephen.[9]

Dougan was infuriated when he discovered that Moody had submitted the report without his consent, and began to compose a response, but he died, destitute,[32] in September 1826, before he had completed his response.[1] Dougan's response was completed after his death by his daughter, Mary,[32] but it was intercepted by Moody, who annotated it extensively with refutations, before it reached Bathurst.[1] A feud between Moody and Mary Dougan continued after the death of John Dougan.[1] For their efforts, Dougan and Moody were each made a Justice of the Peace.[31]

When the British Government abandoned plans to implement the plans of Sir James Stirling to settle the Swan River Colony, Stirling and Moody, in August 1828, offered form an association of private capitalists that would settle Australia, using their own capital, observing the 'principles' that had been observed by William Penn in the settlement of Pennsylvania, but this proposal was rejected by the government.[18][19]

Moody’s residential office at the Colonial Office was abolished in 1828.[11][41] His departure from this office was a consequence of his 'unpopularity with the Saints [Evangelical Christians]'.[11][41] Moody returned to the West Indies in 1828, to perform special service in the Dutch Colonies for Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, which he completed in 1829.[17] During this period in which he were in the West Indies, Moody rose from the rank of Major to that of Colonel in the Royal Engineers.[2][42][43] Moody served as Commander of the Royal Engineers in the West Indies from 1829 to 1833,[44] when he was appointed Director of the Royal Gunpowder Manufactory at Waltham Abbey,[45] and of another manufactory of small arms at Waltham Abbey.[10] Moody received a DCL degree from the University of Oxford on 13 June 1834.[46]

He was made a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1830,[20] and had been promoted to Colonel by 1847.[20]

It is likely that the illustrious reputation, at the Colonial Office, that Thomas had acquired, contributed to the Office's decision to appoint his son, Richard Clement Moody, to the position of Lieutenant-Governor of the Falkland Islands when Richard Clement Moody was only the unprecedentedly young age of 28 years.[47] Thomas's reputation may also have contributed to the appointment of Richard Clement Moody as the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in 1858.[53]