Justice Holt, who many years before had determined, that every slave coming into England became free.  He attacked and refuted it again by a learned and laborious inquiry into all the principles of Villenage.  He refuted it again, by showing it to be an axiom in the British constitution, “That every man in England was free to sue for and defend his rights, and that force could not be used without a legal process,” leaving it to the judges to determine, whether an African was a man.  He attacked, also, the opinion of Judge Blackstone, and showed where his error lay.  This valuable book, containing these and other kinds of arguments on the subject, he distributed, but particularly among the lawyers, giving them an opportunity of refuting or acknowledging the doctrines it contained.

While Mr. Sharp was engaged in this work, another case offered, in which he took a part.  This was in the year 1768.  Hylas, an African slave, prosecuted a person of the name of Newton for having kidnapped his wife, and sent her to the West Indies.  The result of the trial was, that damages to the amount of a shilling were given, and the defendant was bound to bring back the woman, either by the first ship, or in six months from this decision of the court.

But soon after the work just mentioned was out, and when Mr. Sharp was better prepared, a third case occurred.  This happened in the year 1770.  Robert Stapylton, who lived at Chelsea, in conjunction with John Malony and Edward Armstrong, two watermen, seized the person of Thomas Lewis, an African slave, in a dark night, and dragged him to a boat lying in the Thames; they then gagged him, and tied him with a cord, and rowed him down to a ship, and put him on board to be sold as a slave in Jamaica.  This base action took place near the garden of Mrs. Banks, the mother of the present Sir Joseph Banks.  Lewis, it appears, on being seized, screamed violently.  The servants of Mrs. Banks, who heard his cries, ran to his assistance, but the boat was gone.  On informing their mistress of what had happened, she sent for Mr. Sharp, who began now to be known as the friend of the helpless Africans, and professed her willingness to incur the expense of bringing the delinquents to justice.  Mr. Sharp, with some difficulty, procured a habeas corpus, in consequence of which Lewis was brought from Gravesend just as the vessel was on the point of sailing.  An action was then commenced against Stapylton, who defended himself, on the plea, “That Lewis belonged to him as his slave.”  In the course of the trial, Mr. Dunning, who was counsel for Lewis, paid Mr. Sharp a handsome compliment, for he held in his hand Mr. Sharp’s book on the injustice and dangerous tendency of tolerating slavery in England, while he was pleading; and in his address to the jury he spoke and acted thus:  “I shall submit to you,” says Mr. Dunning, “what my ideas are upon such evidence, reserving to myself an opportunity of discussing it more particularly, and reserving to myself a right to insist upon a position, which I will maintain (and here he held up the book to the notice of those present) in any place and in any court of the kingdom, that our laws admit of no such property[A].”  The result of the trial was, that the jury pronounced the plaintiff not to have been the property of the defendant, several of them crying out “No property, no property.”