in the service of a respectable apothecary (Mr. Brown) in Fenchurch Street. In that comfortable situation he remained for two years, when, as he was one day attending his mistress behind a hackney coach, he was seen, and quickly recognised, by the lawyer to whom he had been a slave; and who, conceiving, from his appearance and active employment, that he must have regained his strength sufficiently for useful labour, instantly formed a design to recover possession of him. He followed the coach, for the purpose of obtaining intelligence of his abode; and having discovered it, laid a plan to entrap him.

MS. "Some days afterwards, he (David Lisle) employed two of the Lord Mayor's officers to attend him to a public-house, from whence he sent a messenger, to acquaint Jonathan Strong that a person wanted to speak with him: Jonathan, of course, came, and was shocked to find that it was his old master who had sent for him, and who now immediately delivered him into the custody of the two officers. Jonathan, however, sent for Mr. Brown, who likewise came, but being violently threatened by the lawyer, on a charge of having detained his property (as he called Strong), he was intimidated, and left him in Lisle's hands.

"After this, G. S. received a letter from the Poultry Compter, signed Jonathan Strong, a name which he did not at first recollect; he sent, however, a messenger to the Compter to inquire about him, but the keepers denied that they had, any such person committed to their charge."

I cannot refrain from adding another short testimony of Mr. William Sharp's humane behaviour to the distressed, which appeared in the voucher delivered in court by Strong himself: "I meet with a man-told him my case—he recommended to Mr. William Sharp in Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street: I took his advice and went to Mr. Sharp. I could hardly walk, or see my way, where I was going. When I came to him, and he saw me in that condition, the gentleman take charity of me, and give me some stoff to wash my eyes with, and some money to get myself a little necessaries till next day. The day after, I come to the gentleman, and he sent me into the hospital, and I was in there four months and half. All the while I was in the hospital, the gentleman find me in clothes, shoes, and stockings, and when I come out, he paid for my lodging, and a money to find myself some necessaries, till he get me into a place JONATHAN STRONG."

F

This refusal was sufficient to rouse the suspicion and to call forth the active benevolence of Mr. Sharp.

MS. “G. S. then went himself to the Compter, inquired for the master of the prison, and insisted on seeing Jonathan Strong. He was then called, and was immediately recollected by G. S., who charged the master of the prison, at his own peril, not to deliver him up to any person whatever, who might claim him, until he had been carried before the Lord Mayor (Sir Robert Kite), to whom G. S. immediately went, and gave information that a Jonathan Strong had been confined in prison without any warrant; and he therefore requested of his Lordship to summon those persons who detained him, and to give G. S. notice to attend at the same time. This request was complied with."

It is feelingly remarked, by an eminent and intimate friend of Mr. Sharp, that his extraordinary action in behalf of the African race did not take its rise in theory, but was elicited by the occurrence of natural circumstances; and, agreeably to this observation, will presently be seen, that the few events just related form the whole ground-work of his final success in the present case, and of his subsequent exertions in others of a similar nature.

MS. "When the appointed day was come (Sept. 18), G. S. attended at the Mansion-House, and found Jonathan in the presence of the Lord Mayor, and also two persons who claimed him; the one, a notary public, who produced a bill of sale from the original master* to James Kerr, Esq., a Jamaica planter, who had refused

* As documents of this kind are now happily obsolete in England, the reader may think a specimen of them worthy his curiosity.

“BILL, &c. &c.—To all to whom these presents shall come, David Lisle, of the parish of St. James, &c. &c. greeting. Know ye that the said David Lisle, for and in consideration of the sum of thirty pounds good and lawful money, &c. to him in hand truly paid by James Kerr, Esq. late of Jamaica, &c. &c., doth grant, bargain, sell, and confirm unto the said James Kerr, his heirs and assigns, one Negro Man Slave, named Jonathan Strong, now in the

to pay the purchase money (thirty pounds) until the Negro should be delivered on board a ship belonging to Messrs. Muir and Atkinson, bound to Jamaica, the captain of which vessel, Mr. David Lair, was the other person then attending to take him away.

"The Lord Mayor having heard the claim, said, that the lad had not stolen any thing, and was not guilty of any offence, and was therefore at liberty to go away;' whereupon the captain seized him by the arm, and told the Lord Mayor, he took him as the property of Mr. Kerr.' Mr. Beech, the city coroner, now came behind G. S., and whispered in his ear the words Charge him;' at which G. S. turned upon the captain, and in an angry manner said, Sir, I charge you for an assault.' On this, Captain Lair quitted his hold of Jonathan's arm, and all bowed to the Lord Mayor and came away, Jonathan following G. S., and no one daring to touch him.”

"A few days after this transaction, G. S. was charged, by a writ, with having robbed the original master, David Lisle, the lawyer, of a Negro slave, and also of another slave, &c. &c."

In these charitable exertions Granville appears to have been seconded by his brother James. He alludes to this circumstance, in a letter addressed to the Rev. Dr. Muyssen, (in Nov. 1767), in which he mentions" a law-suit commenced against him and his brother James for having lawfully and openly obtained the liberty of a poor Negro before the Chief Magistrate of the city *.'

possession of the said David Lisle, and the reversion and reversions, remainder and remainders, rents, profits, and services of the said Slave, and all the estate, right, title, interest, property, claim, and demand whatsoever, of him the said David Lisle, of, in, and to the same, To have and to hold the said Negro man, Jonathan Strong, unto the said James Kerr, his heirs, &c. to the only proper and absolute use and behoof of the said J. Kerr, his heirs, and assigns, &c. for ever, &c. "Signed, DAVID LISLE." (Here follows a receipt from David Lisle for the thirty pounds paid by James Kerr.) Minutes of the Trial of Jonathan Strong.

• A manuscript account (also drawn up by Mr. Granville Sharp) of the action brought on this occasion by Lisle, is entitled, "The Case of James and Granville Sharp, as far as they have any concern with James Kerr, Esq.”

But the action at law was not the only weapon employed to alarm him, and to deter him from the prosecution of his humane task. That no method might be left unessayed, which avarice or malice could prompt, to retrieve the step that had been lost, David Lisle sought out the Negro's FRIEND at his brother William's house (where he then resided), and having announced his name, was admitted. The conversation, on one part at least, was warm; and Lisle, after ineffectual denunciations of revenge in various ways, attempted to intimidate by a challenge.-It is important to learn in what manner a defiance of this nature was received by a man of Mr. Sharp's character: the anecdote is thus related in the Manuscript Notes.

"Oct. 1, 1767. David Lisle, Esq. (a man of the law) called on me in Mincing Lane, to demand gentlemanlike satisfaction, because I had procured the liberty of his slave, Jonathan Strong. I told him, that, as he had studied the law so many years, he should want no satisfaction that the law could give him.'

Mr. Sharp kept his word faithfully, but in a way little to be expected from a person who, as he himself states, had never once opened a law book to consult it, till on occasion of the present cause."

His first step, in order to defend himself from the legal process instituted against him, was, to apply to an eminent solicitor in the Lord Mayor's office, and to retain Sir James Eyre, then Recorder of the city (and afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas), as his counsel. After some consideration of the case, the solicitor brought him a copy of the opinion given in the year 1729, by the Attorney and Solicitor General, York and Talbot (asserting, as before stated, that a Slave coming from the West Indies to Great Britain or Ireland, does not become free), and assured him that they should not be able to defend him against the action, as the Lord Chief Justice Mansfield was also decidedly of the same opinion.

Information coming from such sources, and delivered on such authorities, would have produced despair in a mind less firm, less conscious of its own powers, and of the unconquerable claims of

universal justice. To Granville it furnished excitement, and a resolution (however unwillingly taken) to depend on himself in the arduous task which he now saw presented to him. "Thus forsaken," he says (in a letter of reply to the Earl of Hardwicke*), “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."

It will be found, from a subsequent letter to the Bishop of London, that, in pursuance of this resolution, he gave himself up, for nearly two years, to an intense study of the English laws on those points particularly which regard the liberty of person in British subjects. A folio common-place book, filled with the most important extracts on that topic, attests his unremitting diligence +.

As it was during these researches that his mind appears to have been first turned to the substantial redress of detested slavery, our attention is naturally called to observe the rising progress of his thoughts on the subject. The following notes, in which, as before hinted, a simple recurrence to the acts of aggression on the part of Lisle is rendered productive of the most powerful inference, are copied from an entry made by himself on a detached sheet of paper. They follow in the order here given :

S."1767, Saturday, September 12.-Received a letter from Jonathan Strong, a Negro.

* The Opinion of York and Talbot being quoted (many years afterwards) in Bowyer's "Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade," the Earl of Hardwicke, with feelings which did honour to his heart, but under the influence of less accurate information than was his due, addressed a note to Mr. Bowyer, questioning the correctness of the statement. Mr. Bowyer applied to Mr. Sharp for a satisfactory answer to his Lordship's observations; which was accordingly sent in the letter here alluded to.

+ The folio is thus marked on the cover, in his own hand-writing:-" Memorandums of Law and Constitutional History, selected in the course of reading."