question could not be regarded as finally settled till 1772, when a slave named Somersett was brought over to England from Jamaica by his master, and on his arrival in the Thames claimed his freedom, and under a writ of habeas corpus had his claim allowed by Lord Mansfield.  The master’s counsel contended that slavery was not a condition unsanctioned by English law, for villeinage was slavery, and no statute had ever abolished villeinage.  But the Chief-justice, in the first place, denied that villeinage had ever been slavery such as existed in the West Indies; and, in the second place, he pronounced that, whether it had been or not, it had, at all events, long ceased in England, and could not be revived.  “The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.  Every man who comes into England is entitled to the protection of English law."[159] But this freedom was as yet held to be only co-extensive with these islands.  And for sixty years more our West India Islands continued to be cultivated by the labor of slaves, some of whom were the offspring of slaves previously employed, though by far the greater part were imported yearly from the western coast of Africa.  The supply from that country seemed inexhaustible.  The native chiefs in time of war gladly sold their prisoners to the captains of British vessels; in time of peace they sold them their own subjects; and, if at any time these modes of obtaining slaves slackened, the captains would land at night, and, attacking the villages on the coast sweep off the inhabitants on board their ships, and at once set sail with their booty.  The sufferings of these unhappy captives in what was called the “middle passage”—­the passage between their native land and the West India Islands—­were for a long time unknown or disregarded, till, early in Pitt’s first ministry, they attracted the notice of some of our naval officers who were stationed in the West Indies, and who, on their return to England, related the horrors which they had witnessed or heard of—­how, between decks too low to admit of a full-grown man standing upright, the wretched victims, chained to the sides of the ships, lay squeezed together in such numbers, though the whole voyage was within the tropics, that, from the overpowering heat and scantiness of food, it was estimated that two-thirds of each cargo died on the passage.  Most fortunately for the credit of England, the fearful trade was brought under the notice of a young member of Parliament singularly zealous in the cause of humanity and religion, endowed with untiring industry and powerful eloquence, and connected by the closest ties of personal intimacy with Mr. Pitt.  To hear of such a system of organized murder, as the British officers described the slave-trade to be, was quite sufficient to induce Mr. Wilberforce to resolve to devote himself to its suppression.  He laid the case in all its horrors before his friend the Prime-minister, a man as ready as himself to grapple