presence of the lord mayor and others, and, fearing a prosecution, let
his prisoner go, leaving him to be conveyed away by Mr. Sharp.

Mr. Sharp having been greatly affected by this case, and foreseeing how
much he might be engaged in others of a similar nature, thought it time
that the law of the land should be known upon this subject: he applied,
therefore, to Dr. Blackstone, afterwards Judge Blackstone, for his
opinion upon it. He was, however, not satisfied with it when he received
it; nor could he obtain any satisfactory answer from several other
lawyers, to whom he afterwards applied. The truth is that the opinion of
York and Talbot, which had been made public and acted upon by the
planters, merchants, and others, was considered of high authority, and
scarcely any one dared to question the legality of it. In this situation
Mr. Sharp saw no means of help but in his own industry, and he
determined immediately to give up two or three years to the study of the
English law, that he might the better advocate the cause of these
miserable people. The result of these studies was the publication of a
book in the year 1769, which he called, _A Representation of the
Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery in England_. In
this work he refuted, in the clearest manner, the opinion of York and
Talbot: he produced against it the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice
Holt, who, many years before, had determined that every slave coming
into England became free: he attacked and refuted it again by a learned
and laborious inquiry into all the principles of Villenage. He refuted
it again by showing it to be an axiom in the British constitution, "That
every man in England was free to sue for and defend his rights, and that
force could not be used without a legal process," leaving it to the
judges to determine whether an African was a man. He attacked also the
opinion of Judge Blackstone, and showed where his error lay. This
valuable book, containing these and other kinds of arguments on the