Disputed statue is part of the fabric of All Souls

SIR – Some people consider the legislation governing alterations to listed historic buildings a pain, but it can also be a blessing.

In the case of All Souls College at Oxford, where activists are agitating for the removal of the statue to Christopher Codrington from the library named after him on the grounds that he made his fortune from slave labour (report, December 21), listed building law would inevitably result in Historic England refusing permission.

The library is a Grade I listed building designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The statue, which was carved by the leading sculptor Sir Henry Cheere in 1734, is well cemented in place in the embayment of the interior that was always intended to take it. It is therefore not just within the curtilage of the listed building but is also an integral part of the design of the interior, and very much qualifies as a “fixture or fitting”. Roger White

Sherborne, Dorset

SIR – I take no pride in the original British Empire that facilitated the slave trade. I do, however, take immense pride in the achievements of the second British Empire that was responsible for its abolition. Its other achievements are best summed up by Joseph Whitaker’s introduction to the British Empire section of his eponymous Almanack over 130 years ago:

“[The British Empire’s] moral greatness is equal to its material. The Empire is governed by settled Law, every man’s property is protected; his person, like his property, cannot be touched except by legal process. Religion is free, and, although susceptible to some improvement, the British Empire under its present Sovereign presents the nearest approach to a true Commonwealth that the world has yet seen …

“The history of our own country – whose language is daily spoken by more than a hundred millions of our people and understood by fifty millions more and which bids fair to become the language of the world – is a subject worthy of study.”

Sadly, the ethics and moral values engendered by the British Empire have, in many former territories, been swept aside by those who are more interested in power than in the freedom of their peoples. Nicholas Young

London W13