Bernard Porter, famous for expressing his views during the Porter–MacKenzie debate on the British Empire, attacked "Empire" in "The London Review of Books" as a "panegyric to British colonialism". Ferguson, in response to this, drew Porter's attention to the conclusion of the book, where he writes: "No one would claim that the record of the British Empire was unblemished. On the contrary, I have tried to show how often it failed to live up to its own ideal of individual liberty, particularly in the early era of enslavement, transportation and the 'ethnic cleansing' of indigenous peoples." Ferguson argues however that the British Empire was preferable to the alternatives: