Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

almost to a reverence, for the character of the

honest merchant, that it was the only subject upon which he was

ever seduced into a eulogium. He strictly practised what he

professed, and both as a merchant, and afterwards as a commissioner

for victualling the navy, his conduct was without stain. He would

not accept the slightest favour of any sort from a contractor; and

when any present was sent to him whilst at the Victualling Office,

he would politely return it, with the intimation that “he had made

it a rule not to accept anything from any person engaged with the

office.” When he found his powers failing, he prepared for death

with as much cheerfulness as he would have prepared himself for a

journey into the country. He sent round and paid all his

tradesmen, took leave of his friends, arranged his affairs, had his

person neatly disposed of, and parted with life serenely and

peacefully in his 74th year. The property which he left did not

amount to two thousand pounds, and, as he had no relatives who

wanted it, he divided it amongst sundry orphans and poor persons

whom he had befriended during his lifetime. Such, in brief, was

the beautiful life of Jonas Hanway,—as honest, energetic, hardworking, and true-hearted a man as ever lived.

 

The life of Granville Sharp is another striking example of the same

power of individual energy—a power which was afterwards transfused

into the noble band of workers in the cause of Slavery Abolition,

prominent among whom were Clarkson, Wilberforce, Buxton, and

Brougham. But, giants though these men were in this cause,

Granville Sharp was the first, and perhaps the greatest of them

all, in point of perseverance, energy, and intrepidity. He began

life as apprentice to a linendraper on Tower Hill; but, leaving

that business after his apprenticeship was out, he next entered as

a clerk in the Ordnance Office; and it was while engaged in that

humble occupation that he carried on in his spare hours the work of

Negro Emancipation. He was always, even when an apprentice, ready

to undertake any amount of volunteer labour where a useful purpose

was to be served. Thus, while learning the linen-drapery business,

a fellow apprentice who lodged in the same house, and was a

Unitarian, led him into frequent discussions on religious subjects.

The Unitarian youth insisted that Granville’s Trinitarian

misconception of certain passages of Scripture arose from his want

of acquaintance with the Greek tongue; on which he immediately set

to work in his evening hours, and shortly acquired an intimate

knowledge of Greek. A similar controversy with another fellow-apprentice, a Jew, as to the interpretation of the prophecies, led

him in like manner to undertake and overcome the difficulties of

Hebrew.

 

But the circumstance which gave the bias and direction to the main

labours of his life originated in his generosity and benevolence.

His brother William, a surgeon in Mincing Lane, gave gratuitous

advice to the poor, and amongst the numerous applicants for relief

at his surgery was a poor African named Jonathan Strong. It

appeared that the negro had been brutally treated by his master, a

Barbadoes lawyer then in London, and became lame, almost blind, and

unable to work; on which his owner, regarding him as of no further

value as a chattel, cruelly turned him adrift into the streets to

starve. This poor man, a mass of disease, supported himself by

begging for a time, until he found his way to William Sharp, who

gave him some medicine, and shortly after got him admitted to St.

Bartholomew’s hospital, where he was cured. On coming out of the

hospital, the two brothers supported the negro in order to keep him

off the streets, but they had not the least suspicion at the time

that any one had a claim upon his person. They even succeeded in

obtaining a situation for Strong with an apothecary, in whose

service he remained for two years; and it was while he was

attending his mistress behind a hackney coach, that his former

owner, the Barbadoes lawyer, recognized him, and determined to

recover possession of the slave, again rendered valuable by the

restoration of his health. The lawyer employed two of the Lord

Mayor’s officers to apprehend Strong, and he was lodged in the

Compter, until he could be shipped off to the West Indies. The

negro, bethinking him in his captivity of the kind services which

Granville Sharp had rendered him in his great distress some years

before, despatched a letter to him requesting his help. Sharp had

forgotten the name of Strong, but he sent a messenger to make

inquiries, who returned saying that the keepers denied having any

such person in their charge. His suspicions were roused, and he

went forthwith to the prison, and insisted upon seeing Jonathan

Strong. He was admitted, and recognized the poor negro, now in

custody as a recaptured slave. Mr. Sharp charged the master of the

prison at his own peril not to deliver up Strong to any person

whatever, until he had been carried before the Lord Mayor, to whom

Sharp immediately went, and obtained a summons against those

persons who had seized and imprisoned Strong without a warrant.

The parties appeared before the Lord Mayor accordingly, and it

appeared from the proceedings that Strong’s former master had

already sold him to a new one, who produced the bill of sale and

claimed the negro as his property. As no charge of offence was

made against Strong, and as the Lord Mayor was incompetent to deal

with the legal question of Strong’s liberty or otherwise, he

discharged him, and the slave followed his benefactor out of court,

no one daring to touch him. The man’s owner immediately gave Sharp

notice of an action to recover possession of his negro slave, of

whom he declared he had been robbed.

 

About that time (1767), the personal liberty of the Englishman,

though cherished as a theory, was subject to grievous

infringements, and was almost daily violated. The impressment of

men for the sea service was constantly practised, and, besides the

press-gangs, there were regular bands of kidnappers employed in

London and all the large towns of the kingdom, to seize men for the

East India Company’s service. And when the men were not wanted for

India, they were shipped off to the planters in the American

colonies. Negro slaves were openly advertised for sale in the

London and Liverpool newspapers. Rewards were offered for

recovering and securing fugitive slaves, and conveying them down to

certain specified ships in the river.

 

The position of the reputed slave in England was undefined and

doubtful. The judgments which had been given in the courts of law

were fluctuating and various, resting on no settled principle.

Although it was a popular belief that no slave could breathe in

England, there were legal men of eminence who expressed a directly

contrary opinion. The lawyers to whom Mr. Sharp resorted for

advice, in defending himself in the action raised against him in

the case of Jonathan Strong, generally concurred in this view, and

he was further told by Jonathan Strong’s owner, that the eminent

Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, and all the leading counsel, were

decidedly of opinion that the slave, by coming into England, did

not become free, but might legally be compelled to return again to

the plantations. Such information would have caused despair in a

mind less courageous and earnest than that of Granville Sharp; but

it only served to stimulate his resolution to fight the battle of

the negroes’ freedom, at least in England. “Forsaken,” he said,

“by my professional defenders, I was compelled, through the want of

regular legal assistance, to make a hopeless attempt at self-defence, though I was totally unacquainted either with the practice

of the law or the foundations of it, having never opened a law book

(except the Bible) in my life, until that time, when I most

reluctantly undertook to search the indexes of a law library, which

my bookseller had lately purchased.”

 

The whole of his time during the day was occupied with the business

of the ordnance department, where he held the most laborious post

in the office; he was therefore under the necessity of conducting

his new studies late at night or early in the morning. He

confessed that he was himself becoming a sort of slave. Writing to

a clerical friend to excuse himself for delay in replying to a

letter, he said, “I profess myself entirely incapable of holding a

literary correspondence. What little time I have been able to save

from sleep at night, and early in the morning, has been necessarily

employed in the examination of some points of law, which admitted

of no delay, and yet required the most diligent researches and

examination in my study.”

 

Mr. Sharp gave up every leisure moment that he could command during

the next two years, to the close study of the laws of England

affecting personal liberty,—wading through an immense mass of dry

and repulsive literature, and making extracts of all the most

important Acts of Parliament, decisions of the courts, and opinions

of eminent lawyers, as he went along. In this tedious and

protracted inquiry he had no instructor, nor assistant, nor

adviser. He could not find a single lawyer whose opinion was

favourable to his undertaking. The results of his inquiries were,

however, as gratifying to himself, as they were surprising to the

gentlemen of the law. “God be thanked,” he wrote, “there is

nothing in any English law or statute—at least that I am able to

find out—that can justify the enslaving of others.” He had

planted his foot firm, and now he doubted nothing. He drew up the

result of his studies in a summary form; it was a plain, clear, and

manly statement, entitled, ‘On the Injustice of Tolerating Slavery

in England;’ and numerous copies, made by himself, were circulated

by him amongst the most eminent lawyers of the time. Strong’s

owner, finding the sort of man he had to deal with, invented

various pretexts for deferring the suit against Sharp, and at

length offered a compromise, which was rejected. Granville went on

circulating his manuscript tract among the lawyers, until at length

those employed against Jonathan Strong were deterred from

proceeding further, and the result was, that the plaintiff was

compelled to pay treble costs for not bringing forward his action.

The tract was then printed in 1769.

 

In the mean time other cases occurred of the kidnapping of negroes

in London, and their shipment to the West Indies for sale.

Wherever Sharp could lay hold of any such case, he at once took

proceedings to rescue the negro. Thus the wife of one Hylas, an

African, was seized, and despatched to Barbadoes; on which Sharp,

in the name of Hylas, instituted legal proceedings against the

aggressor, obtained a verdict with damages, and Hylas’s wife was

brought back to England free.

 

Another forcible capture of a negro, attended with great cruelty,

having occurred in 1770, he immediately set himself on the track of

the aggressors. An African, named Lewis, was seized one dark night

by two watermen employed by the person who claimed the negro as his

property, dragged into the water, hoisted into a boat, where he was

gagged, and his limbs were tied; and then rowing down river, they

put him on board a ship bound for Jamaica, where he was to be sold

for a slave upon his arrival in the island. The cries of the poor

negro had, however, attracted the attention of some neighbours; one

of whom proceeded direct to Mr. Granville Sharp, now known as the

negro’s friend, and informed him of the outrage. Sharp immediately

got a warrant to bring back Lewis, and he proceeded to Gravesend,

but on arrival there the ship had sailed for the