PART III.

1786.

CHAP. I.

A THIRD event which distinguishes the life of Mr. Sharp followed closely on the establishment of American Episcopacy. The whole of that successful transaction was, indeed, scarcely completed, when a combination of unexpected circumstances produced the first attempt to found the FREE COLONY of SIERRA LEONE.

"In the year 1786," says the obituary account* before noticed, "Mr. Granville Sharp was occupied in humanely trying to remedy an inconvenience, which had grown out of his own benevolent exertions in behalf of the African Slaves. When the case of Somerset was decided, there were many slaves, who had been brought over by their masters, in the metropolis; and although an instance has been stated, in the very year now mentioned, of a Negro rescued with difficulty from the attempt of his master to kidnap him, and to force him to a ship lying in the Downs, yet few attempts of that nature had of late been hazarded. The Negroes, therefore, who had been brought to England, being locked up, as it were, in London, and having now no masters to support them, (many of them

* See note in p. 165.

unaccustomed to any useful handicraft or calling), and having besides no parish which they could call their own, fell by degrees into great distress, so that they were alarmingly conspicuous throughout the streets as common beggars. As Mr. Sharp was their known patron, they had all flocked to him, in their turn, for support: he had considered them as orphans, who had some title to his care; and he had occasionally relieved them. But their number being great (about four hundred), he found that he could not relieve them daily, consistently with his engagements to others. He had many private pensioners, to whom annual sums, and these to a considerable amount, had been promised, and regularly paid: he could not, therefore, take upon him the entire maintenance of his African orphans. In this dilemma, he formed a scheme for their future permanent support. He determined upon sending them to some spot in Africa, the general land of their ancestors, where-when they were once landed, under a proper leader, and with proper provisions for a time, and implements of husbandry-they might, with but moderate industry, provide for

themselves."

The general accuracy of this account is confirmed by the MS. Notes, with the exception that Mr. Sharp's determination to send the settlers to Africa did not originate merely in his own view of their misery, but was the consequence of applications made to him by the distressed Blacks themselves.

In a letter also to his brother, dated January 1788, he says

"The settlers consisted chiefly of Blacks and People of Colour, who had served in the army and navy during the late war; and, having imprudently spent all their earnings, they fell into extreme poverty, and were starving about the streets, till they were relieved, for some time, by a voluntary subscription of charitable people.

"In the mean time, a proposal was made to them by the late Mr. Smeathman, to form a free settlement at Sierra Leone. Many of them came to consult me about the proposal: sometimes they came in large bodies together.

* An ingenious and honourable man, who had lived for some time at the foot of the Sierra Leone Mountains.-Obituary Acct.

Upon inquiring among themselves, I found that several of them had been on the spot; and they assured me that there was much fine wood-land unoccupied in that part of the coast. This account was confirmed to me by several other channels, and more particularly by a young Negro man, a native of Sierra Leone, whom I happily saved just at that time from slavery."

To form and direct a colony of this nature, composed from men of ardent passions, whose only lessons had been stripes, and whom experience had instructed to start with dread from their fellowcreatures, demanded a mind and character fraught with all the resources which political knowledge and resolution could supply. But the scope of human action contained no enterprise which, if sanctioned by the precepts of virtue and Christianity, could, " in the shape of difficulty or danger," deter Granville from attempting, or make him shrink from the labour of pursuing it. As soon as he had conversed with Smeathman, he seized every opportunity of improving his knowledge of the local qualities of the land which was designed for his new settlement; and he drew up for the settlers a code of laws, not marked with any refined traits of subtlety and Machiavelian policy, but founded on principles of the purest rectitude, and consistent with the religious as well as moral precepts of the scriptural Theocracy.

A letter written by him at the outset of this difficult enterprise, demonstrates the temper and the views with which it had been undertaken. It comprises, after his usual manner, an extensive view of circumstances relative to the subject before him; and is also, as usual, an example of the clear, benevolent, and deeply-religious mind of the writer.

To his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.

My Lord, "Old Jewry, 1st August, 1786. "A very unexpected business having taken up my whole time, ever since I had the honour of waiting on your Grace, I think it right to state the circumstances; the more especially because they are extraordinary.

"Last Friday morning early, two poor Negroes came to inform me that one of their friends was trepanned by his master on shipboard at Gravesend, to be sent as a slave to Barbadoes*. All the Judges being out of town on the circuit, I could not obtain either a warrant, or a writ of Habeas Corpus, after the most unwearied endeavours, till late on Saturday night; and in the mean time I had notice that the ship was sailed from Gravesend. However, I sent off the writ by an attorney and the young man's friends, in a post-chaise, that same night, to Deal, in hopes that the ship might not yet have quitted the Channel; and they happily arrived in the Downs just in time to save the poor despairing man. A delay even of a single minute would have been fatal, for the ship was under sail, and the anchor then weighing up! They brought the young man safe to me yesterday at noon; and, after proper consultation, I sent him this morning, with officers, to catch his master; but he had prudently decamped, and fled to Scotland. The young man confessed that he had intended to jump into the sea as soon as it was dark, in order to avoid slavery by death.

"This subject, and the temper of mind into which it has thrown me, naturally prompt me to remind your Grace, that the abominable, wicked laws of Barbadoes, which expressly tolerate the wilful murder of a slave, still exist, to the disgrace of this kingdom; and that the estate in that guilty island (now suffering under God's apparent displeasure) is still cultivated by involuntary servitude; though the venerable Society for propagating the Gospel have long experienced the extreme impropriety and unprofitableness of that baneful mode of cultivation. When that business was mentioned at the last meeting of the Society, I could scarcely refrain from declaring my mind about it; but thought it might be improper to interfere, as the business was already referred to a Committee.

"The answer of the Society, signed by Dr., to Mr. Benezet, many years ago, gave me great concern. Mr. Benezet himself sent me a copy of it from Philadelphia, and earnestly entreated my assistance to answer it. I had too much veneration for the Society to permit their opinion to be called publicly in question: but I fully answered their missionary, the Rev. Mr. Thomas Th-ps-n, who had attempted publickly to vindicate the African Slave Trade; and sent my answer to Mr. Benezet in MS., which was printed in America by the Quakers.

* The case of Harry Demane, and probably the same that is alluded to in Mr. Clarkson's Obituary Account.