oof of the guilt, a shower of rain fell and
continued for three days immediately after the second lot of slaves had
been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their
vessels[A] with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the
destruction of the third.

[Footnote A: It appeared that they filled six.]

Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a
short-hand-writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the
course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated them
also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as the
guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as
principal minister of state. No notice however was taken by any of these,
of the information which had been thus sent them.

But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence of
the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an
account of it by Mr. Sharp in the newspapers, made such an impression upon
others, that new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find Thomas
Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured Africans. He
had lived to see his poem of The Dying Negro, which had been published in
1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had written a letter to a
friend in America, who was the possessor of slaves, to dissuade him by a
number of arguments from holding such property. And now, when the knowledge
of the case of the ship Zong was spreading, he published that letter under
the title of Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes.

In this same year, Dr. Porteus, bishop of Chester, but now bishop of
London, came forward as a new advocate for the natives of Africa. The way
in which he rendered them service, was by preaching a sermon in their
behalf, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Of the wide
circulation of this sermon, I shall say something in another place, but
much more of the enlightened and pious author of it, who from this time
never failed to aid, at every opportunity, the cause, which he had so ably
undertaken.

In the year 1784, Dr. Gregory produced his Essays Historical and Moral. He
took an opportunity of disseminating in these a circumstantial knowledge of
the Slave-trade, and an equal abhorrence of it at the same time. He
explained the manner of procuring slaves in Africa; the treatment of them
in the passage, (i