“The pretexts used by the Spaniards for enslaving the New World were extremely curious,” George notes “the propagation of the Christian religion was the first reason, the next was the Americans differing from them in colour, manners and customs, all of which are too absurd to take the trouble of refuting.” As for the European practice of enslaving Africans, he wrote, “the very reasons urged for it will be perhaps sufficient to make us hold such practice in execration.” Indeed, George’s comments go even further than Montesquieu’s own opposition to the practice. We can now see, for example, George’s fervent denunciation of slavery in an essay he wrote as Prince of Wales in the late 1750s, after reading Charles de Montesquieu’s classic enlightenment text, The Spirit of the Laws (1748). They reveal a startlingly new picture of the last king of America-one about as far removed as possible from the description of George in the Declaration of Independence: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Since 2015, Queen Elizabeth II has released more than 100,000 pages of documents in the Royal Archives relating to King George III.
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