Commentary In the wake of what I am inclined to call the BLMM, the Black Lives Matter Madness, a self-righteous mob in the city of Bristol toppled a statue of Edward Colston and threw it into the waters of the River Avon. That the 125-year-old statue was an aesthetic adornment to the city at a time when such adornments are completely beyond the capacity of all but one or two of our sculptors counted for nothing in the mind of the mob, infatuated as it was by its own bravery and moral grandeur. Edward Colston (1636–1721) was a merchant and philanthropist who used much of his fortune to endow schools, hospitals and alms-houses for the poor (of considerable architectural merit). He was also a slave trader, albeit at a time when slavery was approved of morally by almost the whole of the educated class and could be carried out only …
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