Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/107

 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE 273 disease and misery by his owner, was healed and assisted through the charity of Mr. Sharp's brother. Recovering his value with his health, he was claimed and seized by his master, and would have been shipped to the colonies, as many Afri- cans were, but for the prompt and resolute interference of Mr. Sharp. In sev- eral similar cases the same gentleman came forward successfully ; but the general question was not determined, or even argued, until 1772, when the celebrated case of the negro Somerset was brought before the Court of King's Bench, which adjudged, after a deliberate hearing, that in England the right of the mas- ter over the slave could not be maintained. The general question was afterward, in 1778, decided still more absolutely by the Scotch Courts, in the case of Wed- derburn vs. Knight. In 1 783 an event occurred well qualified to rouse the feel- ings of the nation, and call its attention to the atrocities of which the slave trade .was the cause and pretext. An action was brought by certain underwriters against the owners of the ship Zong, on the ground that the captain had caused 132 weak, sickly slaves to be thrown overboard for the purpose of claiming their value, for which the plaintiffs would not have been liable if the cargo had died a natural death. The fact of the drowning was admitted, and defended on the plea that want of water had rendered it necessary, though it appeared that the crew had not been put upon short allowance. It now seems incredible that no crim- inal proceeding should have been instituted against the perpetrators of this whole- sale murder. In 1785 the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge proposed as the subject for the Bachelor's Prize Essay, the question, Is it allowable to enslave men without their consent ? Thomas Clarkson, who had gained the prize in the preceding year, again became a candidate. Conceiving that the thesis, though couched in general terms, had an especial reference to the African slave trade, he went to London to make inquiries on the subject. Investigation brought under his view a mass of cruelties and abominations which engrossed his thoughts and shocked his imagination. By night and day they haunted him ; and he has described in lively colors the intense pain which this composition, undertaken solely in the spirit of honorable rivalry, inflicted on him. He gained the prize, but found it impossible to discard the subject from his thoughts. In the succeeding autumn, after great struggles of mind, he resolved to give up his plan for entering the Church, and devoted time, health, and substance (to use his own words) to "seeing these calamities to an end." In sketching the progress of this great measure, the name of Wilberforce alone will be presented to view ; and it is our duty, therefore, in the first place, to make honorable mention of him who first roused Wilberforce in the cause, and whose athletic vigor and indomitable per- severance surmounted danger, difficulties, fatigues, and discouragements which few men could have endured, in the first great object of collecting evidence of the cruelties habitually perpetrated in the slave trade. In the first stage of his proceedings, Mr. Clarkson, in the course of his ap- plication to members of Parliament, called on Mr. Wilberforce, who stated that ' the subject had often employed his thoughts and was near his heart." He in- 18