mily.

[4] This convention movement is well treated in J. W. Cromwell's _The
Negro in American History_, pp. 27-46.

[5] Penn, _The Afro-American Press_, p. 35.

[6] Brown, _The Rising Son_, p. 473.

[7] Penn, _The Afro-American Press_, p. 38.

[8] Penn, _The Afro-American Press_, pp. 39-40.

[9] _Ibid._, p. 41.

[10] Penn, _The Afro-American Press_, pp. 42-43.

[11] Penn, _The Afro-American Press_, pp. 43-46.

[12] From papers in the possession of Ray's family.

[13] These letters are in the possession of the author.

THE SLAVE IN UPPER CANADA[A]

The dictum of Lord Chief Justice Holt: "As soon as a slave enters
England he becomes free"[1] was succeeded by the decision of the Court
of King's Bench to the same effect in the celebrated case of Somerset
_v._ Stewart[2] where Lord Mansfield is reported to have said: "The
air of England has long been too pure for a slave and every man is
free who breathes it."[3]

James Somerest,[4] a Negro slave of Charles Stewart in Jamaica, had
been brought by his master to England "to attend and abide with him
and to carry him back as soon as his business should be transacted."
The Negro refused to go back, whereupon he was put in irons and taken
on board the ship _Ann and Mary_ lying in the Thames and bound for
Jamaica. Lord Mansfield granted a writ of habeas corpus requiring
Captain Knowles to produce Somerset before him with the cause of the
detainer. On the motion, the cause being stated as above indicated,
Lord Mansfield referred the matter to the Full Court of King's Bench;
whereupon, on June 22, 1772, judgment was given for the Negro. The
basis of the decision, the theme of the argument, was that the only
kind of slavery known to English law was villeinage, that the Statute
of Tenures (1660) (12 Car. 11, c. 24) expressly abolished villeins
regardant to a manor and by implication villeins in gross. The reasons
for the decision would hardly stand fire at the present day. The
investigation of Paul Vinogradoff and others have conclusively
established that there was not a real difference in status between the
so-called villein regardant and villein in gross, and that in any case
the villein was not properly a slave but rather a serf.[5] Moreover,
the Statute of Tenures deals solely with tenure and not with status.

But what seems to have been taken for granted, namely that slavery,
personal slavery, had never existed in England and that the only
unfree person