STEPHEN HOPKINS
He suffered from an advanced stage of palsy which made it difficult for him to sign.
This was an expression of concern from the merchants of Rhode Island to England regarding curtailing aspects of the slave trade. Ironically, this Remonstrance is one of the first documents objecting to the management of America’s affairs by England when America had no representation. Therefore it played a part in the process which culminated in the American Revolution and freedom from England. And yet the subject was not freedom at all but just the opposite—the prerogative of maintaining the slave trade. Note that the appeal to the Board of Trade was not couched in ethical or political argument but as a mercantile argument—Rhode Islander’s would import less British goods.
Hopkins was complaining about the fact that England could tax the colonies and thereby take their property without their consent made the American colonists in the “miserable condition of slaves.” Essentially the fundamental complaint of the Americans was this and in a decade it would erupt as the American Revolution. At the same time, Hopkins was a slave owner and yet saw nothing wrong with that.
Stephen Hopkins is a Jamaican-born British-Australian director and producer of film and television. He directed Predator 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Blown Away, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and the Jesse Owens biopic Race. He also produced and directed several episodes of the first season of 24.
