Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/25

Rh to overflow, will be a great discouragement: but, let us remember, that the Lord's power, is above the power of darkness!! His hand is not shortened, that it cannot save by few, as well as by many."

Sharp, replying in a letter dated Old Jewry, London, August 21, 1772, declares his cordial sympathy with the writer, and urges petitions "against the toleration of slavery in the Colonies."

Sharp's correspondence was subsequently extended to Benjamin Franklin, and to Dr. Rush. In a letter of the latter, dated Philadelphia, 1st May, 1773, are the following interesting words: "A spirit of humanity and religion begins to awaken, in several of the Colonies, in favor of the poor negroes. The clergy begin to bear a public testimony against this violation of the laws of nature and christianity. Great events have been brought about by small beginings. Anthony Benezet stood alone a few years ago, in opposing negro slavery in Philadelphia; and now three-fourths of the province, as well as of the city, cry out against it," &c.

Sharp, in the course of this correspondence with America, was led to investigate the nature of the contest between the Colonies and the mother country, and in 1774, published a tract, entitled "A declaration of the people's natural rights to a share in the Legislature, which is the fundamental principle of the British Constitution." Of this he gave 250 copies to Dr. Franklin, who despatched them to America the same day. The tract was immediately and extensively republished in the Colonies. In this tract, he displayed the intrepid and impartial love which ever glowed in his bosom, for "the real rights of men." He saw the Colonies oppressed, and he became at once their advocate. Happy indeed, for them and for the world would it have been, if their love for rights, had been impartial and magnanimous like his. Then indeed, had slavery ceased with the dominion of Britain from the United States, and instead of remaining as they now emphatically are, "the land of the brave and the home of the slave," they would have been, with a glory before unknown to earth, " the land of the brave and the home of the free."