was Thomas Day, the celebrated author of _Sandford and Merton_, and
whose virtues were well known among those who had the happiness of his
friendship. In the year 1773 he published a poem, which he wrote
expressly in behalf of the oppressed Africans. He gave it the name of
_The Dying Negro._ The preface to it was written in an able manner by
his friend Counsellor Bicknell, who is therefore to be ranked among the
coadjutors in this great cause. The poem was founded on a simple fact,
which had taken place a year or two before. A poor negro had been seized
in London, and forcibly put on board a ship, where he destroyed himself,
rather than return to the land of slavery. To the poem is affixed a
frontispiece, in which the negro is represented. He is made to stand in
an attitude of the most earnest address to heaven, in the course of
which, with the fatal dagger in his hand, he breaks forth in the
following words:

To you this unpolluted blood I pour,
To you that spirit, which ye gave, restore.


This poem, which was the first ever written expressly on the subject,
was read extensively; and it added to the sympathy in favour of
suffering humanity, which was now beginning to show itself in the
kingdom.

About this time the first edition of the _Essay an Truth_ made its
appearance in the world. Dr. Beattie took an opportunity, in this work,
of vindicating the intellectual powers of the Africans from the
aspersions of Hume, and of condemning their slavery as a barbarous piece
of policy, and as inconsistent with the free and generous spirit of the
British nation.