We have pointed this out before but the idea seems to still have legs. This idea that people now owe compensation, reparations, to those in the New World who are descendants of those enslaved and transported there.

Barbados is trying to collect on such a promise - or perhaps construct the argument that such a promise should be made. Lionel Shriver runs back with the usual arguments against.

There is a much, much, simpler point to be made. So, make it again we shall.

With the possible exception of poor, benighted, Haiti - the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere - those transatlantic descendants of those enslaved are better off than the descendants of those not enslaved in West and Southern Africa.

We agree, slavery was vile. Yet the net effect of that movement of peoples, on people alive today, was to make better off those descendants of those enslaved. This is not something that compensation, reparations, can be paid for.

No, we are not trying to justify slavery through this argument. No, the suffering then is not compensated for by the position now. Yes, it was a moral outrage and so on - we agree with all of the criticisms of the acts themselves. And yet the impact upon the economic lives of those here with us today was beneficial. Which isn’t something that can be compensated for.

Which is, as far as we’re concerned, the end of that argument.

We do indeed agree that this current world is not perfect, that things both can and should be done to make it better. Things we should do precisely in order to make it better for all of us - without regard to creed or colour.

As Robert Wright points out, peace, easy taxes and the tolerable administration of justice would be a good start. As was pointed out a generation before the end of the slave trade, two generations before the end of slavery. So, about time we got on with it perhaps?