G. S. to the Right Rev. Lord Bishop of London, President of the Society for the Conversion and religious Instruction and Education of Negro Slaves in the West India Islands.

"My Lord,

66

"14th January, 1795.

I have lately been informed that your Lordship has obtained a Charter for the establishment of a Society to promote the Instruction of Negro Slaves in the British Colonies, and that a foundation is thereby laid for forming a most respectable body of trustees, whereof your Lordship, as Bishop of London, is the President, with full powers to accept the reversions of lands, to be appropriated, after the death of the donors, to that charitable purpose, notwithstanding the existing laws against mortmain.

["The Bishops of London, having for many years been charged with the spiritual concerns of all the British colonies, must frequently have been impressed with anxious concern for the unhappy case of myriads of poor Heathens, held in hopeless ignorance and slavery, within the bounds of their jurisdictions; and of course must have lamented the want of proper means to provide for the religious instruction of these poor oppressed people, as well as their own want of due influence, at so great a distance, to urge and promote it. And some even worthy predecessors of your Lordship may (through the misrepresentations of mercenary colonists, and other interested persons connected with them, respecting the care and attention of the masters toward their poor Heathen labourers) have probably been induced to consider the Slave Trade, and slavery, rather as the means of introducing poor Heathens to the knowledge of the Gospel under Christian masters, than as illegal oppressions, which the odious terms Slave Trade and Slavery imply, and, through this vain pretence of the colonists, have been deluded to think more favourably than they ought of our national delinquency in tolerating slavery. But the contrary effect has been notorious: instead of instructing their slaves to become Christians, the masters themselves, by illegal trust of an unlimited dominion over their poor brethren, have generally acquired all the vicious depravities of the worst of Heathens; and the almost total neglect of religious instructions to their slaves is sufficiently known. Of late, indeed, some few itinerant Moravians, and also well-meaning enthusiasts, have laboured to instruct the poor Heathen strangers, and with astonishing success; but not at the expense of the masters, as it ought to have been; for these poor itinerant missionaries are chiefly supported by subscriptions in England, which I have endeavoured to promote.] "Your Lordship's attention [therefore] to the charitable work of instructing

the Slaves in our colonies, is particularly seasonable at this time, and perfectly accords with the sacred duties of your high and important episcopal charge. And I sincerely hope that this worthy design may be liberally promoted by the affluent, and by all persons that can afford to contribute.

"As to myself, I have very little to spare at present, but I have considerable to offer in reversion for futurity; which I mention with the less reserve, because I do not consider my present intentions as my own charity, but only as a continuation of my unremitted efforts to fulfil a trust devolved upon me by a worthy deceased friend, who gave me an estate, to be bestowed after my decease on some public charity, leaving me entirely at liberty in the choice of the charity. I speak of the estate and manor of Fairsted in Essex; the reversion of which I offered some time ago to the City of London, in trust, for the encouragement of voluntary labourers at the London Workhouse, that a due distinction might be made between industrious people, when they cannot obtain employment, and the idle and vagrant poor, who are the proper objects for Bridewell Hospital; but, more especially, I insisted on the protection and employment of honest and industrious females*, (women servants out of place, and poor girls), who seek an honest employment, to learn the art of spinning wool, if not already taught; and to be encouraged in their diligence by whatever profits may arise from their labour, beyond their estimated proportion of the general charge of maintenance and house-expense. The Court of Aldermen and Common Council ordered my letter to be printed and sent to all the members of that court, that the terms might be considered; but some difficulties were apprehended, chiefly, I believe, respecting the Mortmain Acts, which prevented the acceptance of them.

["I next turned my thoughts to some new regulations for the better employment and improvement of the unhappy females at Bridewell Hospitalt. Spinning has been since introduced, and several other improvements, but an asylum for honest and industrious females cannot, with propriety, be annexed to that charity.]

"I do not at present know of any other established public charity more worthy my attention, than that which your Lordship has proposed for the

"I mention more particularly these endeavours in behalf of honest and industrious females, because I consider their protection as a very important charity, and wish to recommend it to your Lordship as a secondary object for the appropriation of the revenues of your Lordship's trust, in case the primary object should cease by a general enfranchisement of slaves, which there is ample reason to expect."-Note to Letter.

+ Mr. Sharp was elected a Governor of Bridewell and Bethlem Hospitals, on 30th Nov. 1786.

instruction of Negro Slaves in the Colonies; and I am, therefore, willing to present to your Lordship, and the other Trustees for that Charity, by a proper deed of gift, the next reversion of my whole estate and manor of Fairsted, containing about three hundred and fifty-eight acres of valuable freehold land of my own, besides a considerable extent of freehold and copyhold lands, held by the manorial tenants, on the payment of several small quit-rents and occasional fines, of the Manor of Fairsted; two small charges only remaining on the estate. But I wish to create a small additional charge, to provide for the instruction of the poor children in the parish of Fairsted itself, in reading, working, and spinning, as a mere matter of justice to the poor labourers of the soil from whence the revenue arises; for it would seem a gross partiality to send away the whole revenue of the little district for the instruction of foreigners, excluding the poor natives of the manor from the same advantages: and therefore I hope that this additional charge, being under the same trust as that for the instruction of Negro Slaves, may fairly be considered rather as a reasonable and allowable part of the ordinary expenses of the estate, than as a distinct charity. I wish also to reserve, under the same trust, about fourteen acres of land, to be distributed or let, from time to time, in small portions among the poor cottagers of the parish, for gardens or potatoe-grounds, under particular regulations, which I have to propose, while they hold no other land; for without such small portions of land, mere labourers in agriculture can scarcely subsist, since they have been deprived of the benefit of common land: so that this second proposal may also be fairly allowed, as a necessary branch of the ordinary expenses of the estate, towards the due support of the poor labourers by whom it is cultivated, and not as a distinct charity. These two additional charges to the estate, I propose, not only as a kind of duty I owe to the natives of it, but also as humble examples to promote similar arrangements on other estates; because I conceive that whatever will most effectually promote the increase of population in any district or manor, (I mean increase only among industrious and orderly people,) must be an effectual means of increasing also the value of the landed property in that district; and surely a due constant regard and provision for the instruction of the labouring poor, as well as for their comfortable existence, which are the only objects of my two additional charges on the estate, seem to be the most natural and obvious means of producing these desirable effects. "Indeed, some such regulations are too generally wanted throughout England, for the relief of the poor cottagers-I mean chiefly those that are employed

as mere day-labourers in husbandry, whose wages are now become utterly inadequate to the enormously increased prices of all the necessaries of life, and in many counties are not sufficient to purchase the necessary food and clothing for the families even of the most industrious and hard-working men: so that the condition of this most useful and necessary class of the people is certainly too much reduced, and requires some general reformation, more especially as the unfeeling advocates of the Slave Trade are continually vaunting the superior condition of the colonial slaves to that of the labouring poor in England: a comparison as unjust as it is odious; because the English labourer is protected at least from all personal ill-usage and outrage, by equal laws; and when the scanty pittance of wages (though not half that is due from his employers) is expended, he is entitled to demand some additional support for his family from the parish where he lives. (Nevertheless, it must be allowed, that it is extremely unjust that an industrious man, who labours hard six days in every week, should be subjected to this latter most humiliating circumstance, and thereby lose his elective rights as an English householder, merely because his wages are inadequate to the necessary expenses of a family. The case of day-labourers in husbandry most certainly demands redress, though not by any means so deplorable as to admit of the least comparison with the detestable oppression of the poor strangers under our colonial bondage, which is even worse in many respects than the hardened Egyptian tyranny of old, and its retribution must also be more signally awful).]

"If the proposed conditions should be approved by your Lordship and the rest of the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Trustees, I shall immediately prepare an irrevocable deed of gift of the next reversion of my whole estate and manor of Fairsted, to be presented to your Lordship, as President of the Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West India Islands.'

"With sincere respect, my Lord, &c. &c."*

• The original copy of this letter contained a full detail of his first progress in the liberation of Negro Slaves (inserted in a former part of the Memoirs), and many remarks on the Slave Trade, which being considered by the Bishop as extraneous to the immediate purpose of the letter, it was re-written, with the omissions desired by his Lordship, and enclosed to him in a manly address, which the reader will find among other papers of a similar nature in the ensuing chapters.

N. B. Two or three paragraphs, inserted between brackets [ ], are here restored from the original, because they relate to facts explanatory of Mr. Sharp's conduct, in the endeavour to discharge the charitable office bequeathed to him by his friend.

Two days after the date of the foregoing letter, appears the following:

MS. “1795, Jan. 16. Lambeth Palace. The Bishop of London accepts the trust of Fairsted estate."

Nevertheless, this attempt also to settle the reversion, agreeably to the humane views of the testatrix, failed of success.

"The Bishop," says Mr. Sharp in a letter to a friend, "consulted some of the highest authorities in the profession of the law; who were of opinion that the business could not be established, because of the laws against Mortmain; which was nearly the same opinion that had before been given by the Recorder and City Officers."

In the same letter he relates a subsequent experiment, in which he appears to have given away a part of the revenue during his life-time, but of which the future provisions are not mentioned.

"But I have already disposed of a few acres of land, by way of experiment, in favour of another very different charity. The land is laid out in small lots, as cottage-land; some lots consisting of one acre and a half, but mostly of one single acre only: which lots are let to a few farmers' labourers (those that have the largest families in the parish) at a low rent; the income of which is expended in the instruction of all the poor children in the parish, whose parents cannot afford to pay for their schooling. The number of children, in general, has been from fifteen to twenty; and the cottagers are perfectly contented, and pay their rents most thankfully *."

Mrs. Oglethorpe was not the only person who imposed on Mr. Sharp the task of providing for a charitable establishment. About the year 1791 he was named a trustee also by Joseph Wilcox, Esq. (son of the bishop of that name) who left by will a large sum towards endowing an hospital for the county of Kent; and, in pursuance of the testator's wishes on the occasion, he obtained a grant of the

* This experiment is in part proposed in his letter to the Bishop of London. The result of it does not appear.

The estate and manor of Fairsted have been reclaimed by the heirs of Mrs. Oglethorpe since Mr. Sharp's death, and are now in their possession.