Читать книгу: «Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448», страница 3

SLAVES IN BRITAIN

It has sometimes been predicted, not without plausibility, that if this great empire should sink before the rising genius of some new state, when all it has accomplished in arts and arms, and its wealth, its literature, its machinery, are forgotten, its struggles for humanity in the abolition of negro slavery will stand forth in undiminished lustre. All the steps of this mighty operation are interesting. It is a peculiarity of England and its institutions, that many of the most momentous constitutional conflicts have taken place in the courts of law. In despotic countries, this seldom occurs, because the rulers can bend the courts of law to their pleasure; but here, even under the worst governments, whatever degree of freedom was really warranted by law, could be secured by the courts of justice. When it was said that the air of Britain was too pure for a slave to breathe in—that his shackles fell off whenever he reached her happy shore—the sentiment was noble; but the question depended entirely on the law and its technical details. The trials resulting in a decision against slavery, have thus much interest from the influence they exercised on human progress.

There seemed to be every probability that the interesting question, whether ownership in slaves continued after they had reached Britain, would have been tried in Scotland. In the middle of last century, a Mr Sheddan had brought home from Virginia a negro slave to be taught a trade. He was baptised, and, learning his trade, began to acquire notions of freedom and citizenship. When the master thought he had been long enough in Scotland to suit his purpose, the negro was put on board a vessel for Virginia. He got a friend, however, to present for him a petition to the Court of Session. The professional report of the case in Morison's Dictionary of Decisions says: 'The Lords appointed counsel for the negro, and ordered memorials, and afterwards a hearing in presence, upon the respective claims of liberty and servitude by the master and the negro; but during the hearing in presence, the negro died, so the point was not determined.' In the English case, to which we shall presently advert, it was maintained, that from the known temper and opinions of the court, the decision, would undoubtedly have been in the negro's favour. At the time when Mr Grenville Sharp, to his immortal honour, took up in the courts of law the question of personal liberty as a legal right, there was a more serious risk of Britain becoming a slave state than it is now easy to imagine. There was no chance of negroes being employed in gangs in the field or in manufactories, but there was imminent danger of their being brought over and kept in multitudes as domestic servants, just as they are still in some of the southern states of America. Mr Sharp drew attention to the following advertisement in the Public Advertiser of 28th March 1769, as one of a kind becoming too common:

'To be sold, a Black Girl, the property of J. B–, eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well; is of an excellent temper and willing disposition.

'Inquire of Mr Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement's Church in the Strand.'

Mr Sharp's early conflicts in the law-courts are more romantic than the last and decisive one. He and his brother had found a poor mendicant negro, called Jonathan Strong, in rags on the streets of London. They took him into their service, and after he had become plump, strong, and acquainted with his business, the man who had brought him from the colonies, an attorney, seeing him behind a carriage, set covetous eyes on him. The lad was waylaid on a false message to a public-house, seized, and committed to the Compter, where, however, he managed to make Mr Sharp acquainted with his position. The indefatigable philanthropist had him brought before the lord mayor as sitting magistrate. After hearing the case stated, his lordship said: 'The lad had not stolen anything, and was not guilty of any offence, and was therefore at liberty to go away.' A captain of a vessel, saying he had been employed by a person who had just bought the youth, to convey him to Jamaica, seized him by the arm as his employer's property. A lawyer standing behind Mr Sharp, who seems to have been puzzled how to proceed, whispered, 'Charge him.' Sharp charged the captain with an assault, and as he would have been immediately committed by the lord mayor if he persisted, he let go his hold. The philanthropist was threatened with a prosecution for abstraction of property, but it was abandoned.

This occurred in 1767. The next important case was that of a negro named Lewis. He 'had formerly,' says Mr Sharp's biographer, 'been a slave in possession of a Mr Stapylton, who now resided at Chelsea. Stapylton, with the aid of two watermen, whom he had hired for that purpose, in a dark night seized the person of Lewis, and, after a struggle, dragged him on his back into the water, and thence into a boat lying in the Thames, where, having first tied his legs, they endeavoured to gag him by running a stick into his mouth; and then rowing down to a ship bound for Jamaica, whose commander was previously engaged in the wicked conspiracy, they put him on board, to be sold as a slave on his arrival in the island.' The negro's cries, however, were heard; the struggle was witnessed; and information given in the quarter whence aid was most likely to come. Mr Sharp lost no time in obtaining a writ of habeas corpus. The ship in the meantime had sailed from Gravesend, but the officer with the writ was able to board her in the Downs. There he saw the negro chained to the mast. The captain was at first furious, and determined to resist; but he knew the danger of deforcing an officer with, such a writ as a habeas corpus, and found it necessary to yield. The writ came up before Lord Mansfield. He did not go into the general question of slavery, for there was an incidental point on which the case could be decided on the side of humanity—the captain and the persons employing him could not prove their property in the slave, supposing such property lawful. He was not only liberated, but his captors were convicted of assault.

These cases, however, did not decide the wide question, whether it was lawful to hold property in negroes in this country. It came at last to be solemnly decided in 1771, on a habeas corpus in the King's Bench. Affidavits having been made before Lord Mansfield, that a coloured man, named Somerset, was confined in irons on board a vessel called the Ann and Mary, bound for Jamaica, he granted a habeas corpus against the captain, to compel him to give an account of his authority for keeping the man in custody. Somerset had been a slave in Virginia, the property of a Mr Stewart; and the captain of the vessel stated that the owner had put him on board, to be conveyed to Jamaica, and there sold. In what was called the return to the writ, the justification for keeping Somerset in restraint was thus quaintly stated:—'That at the time of bringing the said James Somerset from Africa, and long before, there were, and from thence hitherto there have been, and still are, great numbers of negro slaves in Africa; and that during all the time aforesaid, there hath been, and still is a trade, carried on by his majesty's subjects from Africa, to his majesty's colonies or plantations of Virginia and Jamaica, in America, and other colonies and plantations belonging to his majesty in America, for the necessary supplying of the foresaid colonies and plantations with negro slaves.' It proceeded to relate with the same verbosity, that the slaves so brought from Africa 'have been and are saleable and sold as goods and chattels; and upon the sale thereof, have become, and been, and are, the slaves and property of the purchasers thereof.' It was stated that Mr Stewart, who resided in Virginia, had Somerset as a domestic slave or valet—that having business to transact in London, he took his usual attendant there, intending to take him back to Virginia. Somerset, however, made his escape; and when he was apprehended, his master, probably believing that he would thenceforth be rather a troublesome valet, changed his intention, and put the negro into the hands of the captain of a vessel bound for Jamaica, that he might be sold there.

The pleadings upon the legality of this proceeding were solemn and full. The question was, Whether it was to be held a just inference, from the fact of the slave, being undoubtedly by the law of the day property in the colonies, that, while his colonial master made a temporary stay in Britain, he should be property there also, without any direct law to that effect. Had it been a question of inanimate goods, there would be no reason why the property should not continue in the colonial owner. It would be all one to the inanimate object what hands it was in, and regularity and justice would decree that the person who was owner of it in one country should be so in another. But in these cases there was a separate adverse interest of a very strong character. Was the uniformity of this right of possession sufficient to overrule another right—that which every man, black or white, had to the freedom of his own person, unless there was special law to restrain it? The counsel for the negro not only pleaded strongly on this his personal right, but on the consequence to the moral condition of the British Empire, if the inhabitants of slave countries could bring their slaves hither. From the strictness of the laws, and the uniformity of the course of justice, if slaves were permitted in England, it was the very place where property in them would be most secure. Thus the country might become a resort of slaveholders, and its boasted purity and freedom would be sadly contaminated. 'If that right,' said Mr Hargrave, 'is here recognised, domestic slavery, with its horrid train of evils, may be lawfully imported into this country, at the discretion of every individual, foreign and native. It will come not only from our own colonies, and those of other European nations, but from Poland, Russia, Spain, and Turkey—from the coast of Barbary, from the western and eastern coasts of Africa—from every part of the world where it still continues to torment and dishonour the human species.'

The counsel on the other side was the celebrated Mr Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, a friend of freedom, who seems to have undertaken the cause on notions of professional duty, and without any great inclination for it. His first words were: 'It is incumbent on me to justify Captain Knowles's detainer of the negro.' He was careful to shew, that he did not in the meantime maintain that there was an absolute property in Somerset—it was sufficient to shew, that there was a sufficient presumption of property to authorise the shipmaster in detaining him until the absolute question of right was solemnly settled. He proceeded to say: 'It is my misfortune to address an audience, the greater part of which I fear are prejudiced the other way. But wishes, I am well convinced, will never be allowed by your lordships to enter into the determination of the point. This cause must be what in fact and law it is. Its fate, I trust, therefore, depends on fixed and variable rules, resulting by law from the nature of the case. For myself, I would not be understood to intimate a wish in favour of slavery by any means; nor, on the other side, to be supposed the maintainer of an opinion contrary to my own judgment. I am bound in duty to maintain those arguments which are most useful to Captain Knowles, as far as is consistent with truth; and if his conduct has been agreeable to the laws throughout, I am under a further indispensable duty to support it.'

Much reference was made to the ancient laws of villenage, or semi-slavery, in Britain. Mr Dunning maintained, that these were testimony that a slave was not an utter anomaly in the country. The class of villeins had disappeared, and the law regarding them was abolished in the reign of Charles II. But he maintained, that there was nothing in that circumstance to prohibit others from establishing a claim upon separate grounds. He said: 'If the statute of Charles II. ever be repealed, the law of villenage revives in its full force.' It was stated that there were in Britain 15,000 negroes in the same position with Somerset. They had come over as domestics during the temporary sojourn of their owner-masters, intending to go back again. Then it was observed, that many of the slaves were in ships or in colonies which had not special laws for the support of slavery; and by the disfranchisement of these, British subjects would lose many millions' worth of property, which they believed themselves justly to possess.

British justice, however, has held at all times the question of human liberty to be superior to considerations of mere expediency. If the question be, who gains or loses most, there never can be a doubt that the man whose freedom has been reft from him has the greatest of all claims for indulgence. Accordingly, Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge, looking in the face all the threatened evils to property, held that nothing but absolute law could trench on personal freedom. He used on the occasion a Latin expression, to the effect that justice must be done at whatever cost; it has found its way into use as a classical expression, and as no one has been able to find it in any Latin author, it is supposed to have been of Lord Mansfield's own coining. 'Mr Stewart,' he said, 'advances no claims on contract; he rests his whole demand on a right to the negro as slave, and mentions the purpose of detainure of him to be the sending him over to be sold in Jamaica. If the parties will have judgment, fiat justitia ruat cœlum—Let justice be done whatever be the consequence.' In finally delivering judgment, he concluded in these simple but expressive terms: 'The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced, on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself, for which it was created, are erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.'

A few years afterwards—in 1778—a case occurred in Scotland, where the question of a master's rights over a negro slave in Britain was at issue. The right claimed in this case, however, was not of so offensive a nature. The master did not claim the power of seizing the negro as his property. He maintained, however, that their mutual position gave him a right to claim the negro's services, as if he had engaged himself as a servant for life. Mr Wedderburn had bought in Jamaica a negro named Knight, about twelve years old. He came to Scotland as Mr Wedderburn's personal servant, married in the country, and for some years seemed contented with his position. Probably at the suggestion of some one who wished to try the question, as it had been tried in England, Knight went off, avowing his intention of being free. Mr Wedderburn applied to a justice of peace, who at once issued a warrant for the negro's apprehension. The matter, however, came before the sheriff, a professional judge, who decided that the colonial laws of slavery do not extend to Scotland, and that personal service for life is just another term for slavery. After a tedious litigation, this view was affirmed by the Court of Session, and the negro was declared free. The case acquired notice from the interest taken in it by Dr Johnson, and the frequent mention of it in Boswell's well-known work.