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."

[Footnote A: It is lamentable to think, that the same Mr. Dunning, in a
cause of this kind, which came on afterwards, took the opposite side of the
question.]

After this, one or two other trials came on, in which the oppressor was
defeated, and several cases occ