Another coadjutor, to whom these cruel and wicked practices gave birth, was Thomas Day, the celebrated author of Sandford and Merton, and whose virtues were well known among those who had the happiness of his friendship.  In the year 1773 he published a poem, which he wrote expressly in behalf of the oppressed Africans.  He gave it the name of The Dying Negro.  The preface to it was written in an able manner by his friend counsellor Bicknell, who is therefore to be ranked among the coadjutors in this great cause.  The poem was founded on a simple fact, which had taken place a year or two before.  A poor Negro had been seized in London, and forcibly put on board a ship, where he destroyed himself, rather than return to the land of slavery.  To the poem is affixed a frontispiece, in which the Negro is represented.  He is made to stand in an attitude of the most earnest address to Heaven, in the course of which, with the fatal dagger in his hand, he breaks forth in the following words: 

  “To you this unpolluted blood I poor,
  To you that spirit, which ye gave, restore.”

This poem, which was the first ever written expressly on the subject, was read extensively; and it added to the sympathy in favour of suffering humanity, which was now beginning to show itself in the kingdom.

About this time the first edition of the Essay on Truth made its appearance in the world.  Dr. Beattie took an opportunity, in this work, of vindicating the intellectual powers of the Africans from the aspersions of Hume, and of condemning their slavery as a barbarous piece of policy, and as inconsistent with the free and generous spirit of the British nation.

In the year 1774, John Wesley, the celebrated divine, to whose pious labours the religious world will be long indebted, undertook the cause of the poor Africans.  He had been in America, and had seen and pitied their hard condition.  The work which he gave to the world in consequence, was entitled Thoughts on Slavery.  Mr. Wesley had this great cause much at heart, and frequently recommended it to the support of those who attended his useful ministry.

In the year 1776, the abbe Proyart brought out, at Paris, his History of Loango, and other kingdoms in Africa, in which he did ample justice to the moral and intellectual character of the natives there.

The same year produced two new friends in England, in the same cause, but in a line in which no one had yet moved.  David Hartley, then a member of parliament for Hull, and the son of Dr. Hartley who wrote the Essay on Man, found it impossible any longer to pass over without notice the case of the oppressed Africans.  He had long felt for their wretched condition, and, availing himself of his legislative situation, he made a motion in the house of commons, “That the Slave-trade was contrary to the laws of God, and the rights of men.”  In order that he might interest the members as much as possible in his motion, he