Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/22

18 and glorious character, as the handmaid of equity—and one of the first lawyers of the age, placed at the fountain head of justice, and freed by the gathered effulgence of truth, from the sophisms of his character and his class, casts off his prejudices and restores to liberty, her resting place on earth.

2d. We have a deplorable instance of the corruptions of legal practice. Mr. Dunning, who supported tyranny in the case of Somerset, had previously been one of the most bright and efficient defenders of liberty. He was the chief advocate in the case of Thomas Lewis, in 1771, and then triumphantly declared, that no man can be legally detained as a slave in England. Granville Sharp's observations upon this tergiversation, are worthy of record, and should ring like warning thunder upon every lawyer's heart. "This is an abominable and insufferable practice in lawyers, to undertake causes diametrically opposite to their own declared opinions of law and justice." 3d. We are encouraged in assailing wickedness, however inveterate it may have grown—however fearful the power which supports it—however great the influence and the talent and the learning which may be arrayed in its defence! In the case before us, perversion of law, supported by the practice of almost half a century, had become as law itself. The abuse was admitted into all the courts, and was sustained by almost every lawyer. The fountains of justice were corrupted; and the tyrant doctrine of right being confined to a particular class, while another class was mercilessly bereaved of every right, lorded it over the land. Britain, in boasting of liberty, was a hypocrite; for her liberty was licentiousness; the dreadful licentiousness practiced by the learned and rich, of plundering and oppressing without remorse, the ignorant and the poor. In the midst of this wickedness, a man with a single eye to God, arose! What was darkness through sophistry, to the highest intellects and to the deepest scholarship of the mighty minds around him, to him was light. No selfishness—no partiality—no prejudice—no pride—no fear or idolatry of man, clouded the light of eternal equity and love, which burnt in his