Granville Sharp

“ 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 linen-draper on Tower Hill ”

“ It refreshes my soul to find, that Granville Sharp, partook not of this unfaithfulness. Contemplating the depth and almost death in sin, of the national mind, the others solemnly deliberated, whether they should attack the whole evil, or only a part of it; for it does not seem, that they saw so clearly, as we now cannot help seeing, that the slave trade was merely a branch of slavery—they saw that it was a similar evil—but they do not seem to have seen, that it was an effect of another evil; and that slavery, its cause, must be abolished before it could cease. ”

“ Granville Sharp's notes declare the same conviction of Mr. Pitt's magnanimity and integrity in this holy cause.
But though Sharp, as chairman and member of the committee of the society for abolishing the African slave trade, confined himself to that particular and limited object, he did not merge therein his personal and separate identity, or forsake the nobler yearnings of his soul. Alive to the cause of universal philanthropy, he seized every opportunity of urging the sacred cause of the slave ”

“ In Granville Sharp, the cause obtained a temporary patron, in whom the members of the establishment acknowledged a true churchman, and real christians of every denomination, a friend and a brother. Perhaps it would not have been possible to find, a man in whom the qualities requisite for the first chairman of the British and Foreign Bible Society, were so completely united, as they were in this venerable philanthropist. A churchman in faith, and universal in charity, he stamped upon the institution, while it was yet tender, those characters which suited its constitution and its end ”

“ Granville Sharp, was a friend of peace. He had studied his Bible too much, and loved it too well, to be ignorant of the injunctions, "love worketh no ill to its neighbor;" "resist not evil;" "recompense no man evil for evil;" "avenge not yourselves;" "be not overcome of evil—but overcome evil with good;" "love your enemies—bless them that curse you—do good to them that hate you—and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." ”

“ We have a deplorable instance of the corruptions of legal practice. Mr. Dunning, who supported tyranny in the case of Somerset, had previously been one of the most bright and efficient defenders of liberty. He was the chief advocate in the case of Thomas Lewis, in 1771, and then triumphantly declared, that no man can be legally detained as a slave in England. Granville Sharp's observations upon this tergiversation, are worthy of record, and should ring like warning thunder upon every lawyer's heart. ”

“ Let every man judge which is the greatest felony! Of this internal slave trade, the city of Washington is the metropolis!
Should any one here observe, that Sierra Leone became eventually a warrior colony, with its forts and its guns—and that it put on this character, even before its connexion with Granville Sharp was dissolved, I admit and deplore the fact. The change was unworthy of the glorious foundation on which it rose. Such was also the eventual result in Pennsylvania, that brother settlement! ”

“ But how surprised was I to hear, in the course of our conversation, of the labors of Granville Sharp, of the writings of Ramsay, and of the controversy in which the latter was engaged, of all which I had hitherto known nothing. How surprised was I to learn, that William Dillwyn himself had two years before associated himself with five others for the purpose of enlightening the public mind upon this great subject. How astonished was I to find that a society had been formed in America for the same object, with some of the principal members of which he was intimately acquainted. ”

“ Sharp mourned, but was strengthened. He only saw the more clearly, the need in which that wildly noble, but much outraged class stood of an advocate; and he was only stirred up, the more vigorously to defend their sacred rights. ”

“ The consumers of slave produce.
What then are slave masters? Merely mercenaries, who when tempted or hired by the consumer, conduct or do the dreadful work, which must be done, before the consumer, the tempter, can be gratified.
Is it not, I would solemnly say to every reader of these lines, as criminal to hire or support slavery, as it is directly to perpetrate it? Or, if the slave master be found guilty at the judgment seat, can they escape, who voluntarily give him the sole motive for becoming or continuing a slave master? Consumers of slave produce, look well to it. ”

“ The inhabitants of Great Britain and the inhabitants of the colonies seem to be almost equally guilty of oppression. The colonies protest against the iniquity of the slavetrade; but, nevertheless, continue to hold the poor wretched slaves in a most detestable bondage! Great Britain, indeed, keeps no slaves, but publicly encourages the slave trade, and contemptuously neglects or rejects every petition or attempt of the colonists against that notorious wickedness! ”

“ How long will it take to civilize an uncultivated people, by deluging them, with myriads of the most corrupt, depraved and abandoned inhabitants of a civilized state?
3. How long will it take to christianize heathen nations, by sending the most corrupt, depraved and abandoned people of the United States, as missionaries to them?
4. If instruction be requisite in order to prepare the enslaved Americans for benefiting Africa; and if the slave laws, generally render their instruction impossible, while they remain slaves, how long will it take to prepare them, they remaining slaves? ”

“ Why do slave masters keep slaves? To get labor out of them—and to get money by their labor—and to gratify their affections and appetites by money. They keep slaves to please themselves and to pamper their families—God and their neighbor, in this relation, are as nought to them.
Why do people use slave produce? To please themselves and their company! The cry of the laborer, whose wages are kept back by fraud and force, has gone up to God against it. ”

“ Alas! if color could disgrace a people, how deep in the nethermost regions of shame, would that color be, which is called white in the United States; frequently with such utter recklessness of truth. White! ”

“ Far off to leeward, I see the clear blue sky, breaking through the clouds. A voice of love is loudly sounding—a cry of justice is echoing through the land. Truth is rising in its peaceful, all conquering might. ”

“ Britain, in boasting of liberty, was a hypocrite; for her liberty was licentiousness; the dreadful licentiousness practiced by the learned and rich, of plundering and oppressing without remorse, the ignorant and the poor. In the midst of this wickedness, a man with a single eye to God, arose! What was darkness through sophistry, to the highest intellects and to the deepest scholarship of the mighty minds around him, to him was light. No selfishness—no partiality—no prejudice—no pride—no fear or idolatry of man, clouded the light of eternal equity and love, which burnt in his bosom. ”

“ The committee acknowledged the criminality of both, to be the same—but they adhered to their resolution; fearing, that if they attacked at once, both slavery and the slave trade, they would succeed against neither. ”

“ He heard the voice of heaven calling him up to the whole conflict, and he solemnly and vehemently remonstrated with the committee against the resolution which they had adopted declaring, that "as slavery was as much a crime against the Divine law, as the slave trade, it became the committee to exert themselves equally against the continuance of both; and he did not hesitate to pronounce all present, guilty before God, for shutting those, who were then slaves, out of the pale of their approaching labors." ”

“ If benevolence to that worst part, be our motive, can we send them away from our liberty, and our light, and our laws, and our power, and our benevolence, to a foreign uncivilized and heathen land?
13. If gratification of prejudice be our motive, how much better is it, to yield to prejudice than to crucify it?—to flatter, than to give it no quarter?
14. If it be true, that every sinner must repent or perish, what must be the fate of those who strive to put away the annoyance produced by an evil, without repenting of the sin which produces it? ”

“ The suffering people of color, as peculiarly outraged and afflicted, were objects of peculiar compassion to them. The hearts of Englishmen were their home, even while colonial guilt made England, also, a house of bondage to them—but the British mind, after writhing for a while under the abomination, threw it finally and forever off, as we have seen in 1772. England remained their country, as it is the country of every man in the world, who flies to it from oppression. No white man is more honored there, than brown men, or sallow, or yellow men—or pale men, or red men ”

“ Natural relations, are inherent in the nature of things, and nothing can annul them. They arise from the relation which a man bears to mankind in general; and his moral duty results from them. He cannot therefore, change his natural relations—they are universal. Municipal relations are such as arise from being a member of the particular country, where they exist. It appears that by the laws of Virginia, this man is a slave—but the laws of Virginia, rule not in England. In this country, how can this man be a slave, where the meanest have a title to enjoy the rights of freedom. ”

“ When the American Colonization Society was formed, what was the United States' mind? What is it now?
Full of color-phobia! The land is full of it. It is exhibited in legislation, in custom and in feeling. The man is deemed a fool or a villain who is free from it. It is, above all, exhibited in its perfection, when thorough Colonizationists try to disprove it. Even the kind couple with whom I am now boarding, full of general kindness as they are, are full of it. "What! a colored man to be equal to me!! ”

“ How long will it take an individual or a nation to conquer prejudices, by continuing to practice and excuse them;—substituting general acknowledgements of their guilt, for immediately and thoroughly repudiating them? ”

“ Law, ceasing to frame mischief, is restored to its own wholesome and glorious character, as the handmaid of equity—and one of the first lawyers of the age, placed at the fountain head of justice, and freed by the gathered effulgence of truth, from the sophisms of his character and his class, casts off his prejudices and restores to liberty, her resting place on earth. ”

“ Do we not profess to serve the same God who so severely punished the Jews for this very crime ? And is there any just ground to hope, that God, who spared not his own peculiar people, will, nevertheless, excuse the inhabitants of Great Britain and her colonies, when they are wilfully guilty of the same offence! ”

“ Such are the principles, the universal prevalence of which, would make the world a moral Eden—the rejection of which, keeps it a little hell; especially where freemen hold slaves; for of all governments, an oligarchy is the worst. It consists of a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand tyrants, instead of one. It is "diffusing tyranny every where." It is "bringing despotism home to every man's door." It involves the greatest deliberateness and desperation of iniquity, both with law and without law, which it is possible for power to perpetrate against weakness. ”

“ It is I said, that if a man has got one wife, he must not take another wife, or any other woman. 'Oh,' said he, 'two wives, very good—three wives, very, very good.' No, Omai, said I, not so—that would be contrary to the first principle of the law of nature. 'First principle of law of nature,' said he, 'what that? what that?' The first principle of the law of nature is, I said, that no man must do to another person, any thing that he would not like to be done to himself. ”

“ Scott's house, he showed me your 'Law of Retribution.' I was greatly rejoiced to find, that so laborious and learned a man, had appeared as champion for the rights of mankind, against avarice, extortion and inhumanity—that you had, with an heroic courage, dared to press home on an infidel, luxurious world, the dreadful threats of the Lord. The ruins of Babylon, Memphis and Tyre, are strong mementos to a Lisbon, a London, and a Paris, of the recompense paid to those, who fat their luxuries, on the labor of wretched slaves. ”

“ A christian, and an oppressor. A christian, and exercising oppression!! A christian, and yet robbing the poor, because he is poor; robbing him of his liberty, his time, his labor, his safety, his right to the Bible and to the unfettered preaching of the cross of Christ!! to the cultivation of his own mind, and the freedom of his own choice!!
Must not such christianity be, indeed, the "loudest laugh of hell." What can strengthen infidelity so much, as calling such a thing, christianity! What upright mind could exist, which would not forever prefer infidelity to such christianity! ”

“ They were cotemporary with Chatham and Cowper, and Burke and Fox; and at a time when Granville Sharpe could have stepped forward and effectually protected the runaway negro who had taken refuge from the tyranny of his master in a British port, no man could have protected them from the Inveresk laird, their proprietor, had they dared to exercise the right, common to all Britons besides, of removing to some other locality, or of making choice of some other employment. ”