Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/41

Rh Canterbury, dated 1st August, 1786, he thus describes the settlers: "The present set of unfortunate negroes that are starving in our streets were brought here on very different occasions. Some indeed have been brought as servants, but chiefly by officers—others were royalists from America—but more are seamen, who have navigated the King's ships from the East and West Indies, or have served in the war."

In this letter to the Archbishop, Sharp earnestly recommends a Mr. Fraser, as missionary minister to accompany the expedition.

In his memoranda, dated 1st August, 1783, he says, "as the majority of the settlers will probably be Africans returned from slavery to their own soil," &c. The plan of government which he laid down, endeavored to combine the greatest freedom, with the greatest equity, and the highest security. The community was to be divided into tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands, &c, each with a head elected by themselves, and all bound together, by the reciprocal ties of frank pledge. The elections were to be annual. Each individual to be answerable with his person and property, to the tithing of which he was a member, for all damages which he occasioned or which he did not do his best to prevent, the tithing to the hundred and so on: for according to frank pledge, no man is entitled to liberty, who is not duly pledged by his nearest neighbor, for the mutual preservation of peace and right. All crimes, except murder, rape and unnatural crimes, were to be punished proportionably by fine and imprisonment. Thus devised, of these materials and upon these principles, the expedition, after some months delay caused by Mr. Smeatham's sudden death, sailed on 8th April, 1787, under the convoy of the Nautilus, sloop of war, Capt. Thompson. The number of rescued slaves was upwards of four hundred, and besides these, were about sixty Europeans.

The place appropriated for their use was purchased from King Tom, a neighboring chief, and is thus described in the first annual report, 1791:

"The district purchased for the settlement at Sierra Leone, is nearly twice as large as the island of Barbadoes,