Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/179

 this situation the following case offered, which was agreed upon for the determination of this important question.

James Somerset, tin African slave, had been brought to England by his muster, Charles Stewart, in November, 1769. Somerset, in process of time, left him. Stewart took an opportunity of seizing him, and had him conveyed on board the Ann and Mary, Captain Knowles, to be carried out of the kingdom, and sold as a slave in Jamaica. The question was, "Whether a slave, by coming into England, became free?"

In order that time might be given for ascertaining the law fully on this head, the case was argued at three different sittings. First, in January, 1772; secondly, in February, 1772; and thirdly, in May, 1772. And that no decision otherwise than what the law warranted might be given, the opinion of the Judges was taken upon the pleadings. The result of the trial was, That as soon as ever any slave set his foot upon English territory, he became free

Thus ended the great case of Somerset, which, having been determined after so deliberate an investigation of the law, can never be reversed while the British Constitution remains. The eloquence displayed in it by those who were engaged on the side of liberty, was perhaps never exceeded on any occasion. Mr. Sharp felt it his duty, immediately after the trial, to write to Lord North, then principal minister of state, warning him, in the most earnest manner, to abolish immediately both the trade and the slavery of the human species in all the British dominions, as utterly irreconcileable with the principles of the British constitution, and the established religion of the land.

In the year 1774, John Wesley, the celebrated divine, to whose pious labors the religious world will be long indebted, undertook the cause of the Africans. He had been in America, and had seen and pitied their hard condition. The rt-ork which he gave to the world in consequence, was entitled "Thoughts on Slavery." Mr. Wesley had this great cause much at heart, and frequently recommended it to the support of those who attended his useful ministry.

The year 1776 produced two new friends in England, in the same cause, but in a line in which no one had yet moved. David Hartley, then a member of parliament for Hull, found it impossible any longer to pass over without notice the cause of the oppressed Africans. He had long felt for their wretched condition, and, availing himself of his legislative situation, he made a motion in the house of commons, "That the slave trade was contrary to the laws of God and the rights of men."

Dr. Adam Smith, in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," had, so early as the year 1759, held the slaves up in an honorable, and their tyrants in a degrading light. "There is not a negro from the coast of Africa, who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtue neither of the countries they came from, nor of those they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness so justly expose them to the