Clarkson collects various instances.Southern's Oroonoco,founded on a story by Mrs Behn,and Steele's story of Inkle and Yarico in an early Spectator,Pope's poor Indian in the Essay on Man,and allusions by Thomson,Shenstone,and Savage,show that poets and novelists could occasionally turn the theme to account.Hutcheson,the moralist,incidentally condemns slavery;and divines such as bishops Hayter and Warburton took the same view in sermons before the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge.Johnson,'last of the Tories'though he was,had a righteous hatred for the system.(49)He toasted the next insurrection of negroes in the West Indies,and asked why we always heard the 'loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes'?
Thomas Day (1748-1789),as an ardent follower of Rousseau,wrote the Dying Negro in 1773,and,in the same spirit,denounced the inconsistencies of slave-holding champions of American liberty.
Such isolated utterances showed a spreading sentiment.The honour of the first victory in the practical application must be given to Granville Sharp(50)(1735-1813),one of the most charming and,in the best sense,'Quixotic'of men.In 1772his exertions had led to the famous decision by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro Somerset.(51)Sharp in 1787became chairman of the committee formed to attack the slave-trade by collecting the evidence of which Wilberforce made use in parliament.The committee was chiefly composed of Quakers;as indeed,Quakers are pretty sure to be found in every philanthropic movement of the period.I must leave the explanation to the historian of religious movements;but the fact is characteristic.The Quakers had taken the lead in America.The Quaker was both practical and a mystic.His principles put him outside of the ordinary political interests,and of the military world.He directed his activities to helping the poor,the prisoner,and the oppressed.Among the Quakers of the eighteenth century were John Woolman (1720-1772),a writer beloved by the congenial Charles Lamb and Antoine Benezet (1713-1784),born in France,and son of a French refugee who settled in Philadelphia.
When Clarkson wrote the prize essay upon the slave-trade (1785),which started his career,it was from Benezet's writings that he obtained his information.
By their influence the Pennsylvanian Quakers were gradually led to pronounce against slavery;(52)and the first anti-slavery society was founded in Philadelphia in 1775,the year in which the skirmish at Lexington began the war of independence.
That suggests another influence.The Rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising the Quakers.The Quakers were,by their essential principles,in favour of absolute toleration,and their attitude towards dogma was not dissimilar.'Rationalisation'and 'Spiritualisation,are in some directions similar.The general spread of philanthropic sentiment,which found its formula in the Rights of Man,fell in with the Quaker hatred of war and slavery.Voltaire heartily admires Barclay,the Quaker apologist.
It is,therefore,not surprising to find the names of the deists,Franklin and Paine,associated with Quakers in this movement.Franklin was an early president of the new association,and Paine wrote an article to support the early agitation.(53)Paine himself was a Quaker by birth,who had dropped his early creed while retaining a respect for its adherents.When the agitation began it was in fact generally approved by all except the slave-traders.
Sound Whig divines,Watson and Paley and Parr;Unitarians such as Priestley and Gilbert Wakefield and William Smith;and the great methodist,John Wesley,were united on this point.Fox and Burke and Pitt rivalled each other in condemning the system.The actual delay was caused partly by the strength of the commercial interests in parliament,and partly by the growth of the anti-Jacobin sentiment.
The attempt to monopolise the credit of the movement by any particular sect is absurd.Wilberforce and his friends might fairly claim the glory of having been worthy representatives of a new spirit of philanthropy.but most certainly they did not create or originate it.The general growth of that spirit throughout the century must be explained,so far as 'explanation'is possible,by wider causes.It was,as I must venture to assume,a product of complex social changes which were bringing classes and nations into closer contact,binding them together by new ties,and breaking up the old institutions which had been formed under obsolete conditions.The true moving forces were the same whether these representatives announced the new gospel of the 'rights of man';or appealed to the traditional rights of Englishmen;or rallied supporters of the old order so far as it still provided the most efficient machinery for the purpose.The revival of religion under Wesley and the Evangelicals meant the direction of the stream into one channel.The paralytic condition of the Church of England disqualified it for appropriating the new energy.
The men who directed the movements were mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross abuses,and the indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave them an anti-sacerdotal turn.They simply accepted the old Protestant tradition.They took no interest in the intellectual questions involved.