in America, with no other accommodation on ship-board than what is provided for brutes.  This is the second stage of the cruelty, from which the miserable exiles are delivered, only to be placed, and that for life, in subjection to a dominion add system of laws, the most merciless and tyrannical that ever were tolerated upon the face of the earth:  and from all that can be learned by the accounts of people upon the spot, the inordinate authority which the plantation-laws confer upon the slaveholder is exercised, by the English slaveholder especially, with rigour and brutality.

“But necessity is pretended, the name under which every enormity is attempted to be justified; and after all, what is the necessity?  It has never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it is here, by hired servants.  It is said, that it could not be cultivated with quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labour of slaves; by which means, a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells for sixpence, could not be afforded under sixpence-halfpenny—­and this is the necessity!

“The great revolution which has taken place in the western world, may, probably, conduce (and who knows but that it was designed) to accelerate the fall of this abominable tyranny:  and now that this contest and the passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed, perhaps, a season for reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its assistance to the support of an institution replete with human misery, was fit to be trusted with an empire, the most extensive that ever obtained in any age or quarter of the world.”

The publication of these sentiments may be supposed to have produced an extensive effect.  For The Moral Philosophy was adopted early by some of the colleges in our universities into the system of their education.  It soon found its way also into most of the private libraries of the kingdom; and it was, besides, generally read and approved.  Dr. Paley, therefore, must be considered, as having been a considerable coadjutor in interesting the mind of the public in favour of the oppressed Africans.

In the year 1783, we find Mr. Sharp coming again into notice.  We find him at this time taking a part in a cause, the knowledge of which, in proportion as it was disseminated, produced an earnest desire among all disinterested persons for the abolition of the Slave Trade.

In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, Captain Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the seas in order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had been lost in a natural way.  In the course of the trial which afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill and likely