This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter vii Abolition Of The Colonial Slave-trade Gbeat Britain. It may be truly said that from the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the nature of the slave-trade began to be understood by the public, all that was best in England was adverse to it. Among those who denounced it--besides some whose names are now little known, but are recorded with the honour they deserve in the pages of Clarkson--were Baxter, Sir Richard Steele (in Inkle and Yarico), the poets Southerne (in Oroonoko), Pope, Thomson, Shenstone, Dyer, Savage, and above all Cowper (see his Charity, and Task, bk. 2), Thomas Day (author of Sandford and Merton), Sterne, Warburton, Hutcheson, Beattie, John Wesley, Whitfield, Adam Smith, Millar, Robertson, Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Barbauld, Paley, Gregory, Gilbert Wakefield, Bishop Porteus, Dean Tucker. The question of the legal existence of slavery in Great Britain and Ireland was raised in consequence of an opinion given in 1729 by York and Talbot, attorney and solicitor-general at the time, to the effect that a slave by coming into these countries from the West Indies did not become free, and might be compelled by his master to return to the plantations. Chief-Justice Holt had expressed a contrary opinion; and the matter was brought to a final issue by Mr. Granville Sharp in the ease of the negro Somerset. It was decided by Lord Mansfield, in the name of the whole bench, on June 22nd, 1772, that as soon as a slave set his foot on the soil of the British Islands he became free. In 1776 it was moved in the House of Commons by David Hartley, son of the author of Observations on Man, that "the slave-trade was contrary to the laws of God and the rights of men "; but this motion--the first which was made on the subject--failed;...