obviating the objections which the dignitaries of the English Church, made to the requisite consecrations. His attention appears to have been first directed to this subject in 1777, and he pursued it until early in 1787, when Doctors White and Prevost, and in September, 1790, Dr. Madison, were consecrated in due order, by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In consequence of the victory in 1772, gained by law and justice over opinion and precedent, the slaves who had been brought from the west, together with others variously trapanned, became free. But they found themselves in a foreign land, with an uncongenial climate and amidst a crowded population, where their services were little wanted; and we cannot be surprised that their former superiors, who had oppressed or plundered, should now abandon them. The tiger from whose jaws the lamb has been rescued, thinks more of the disappointment of his own appetite than of the sufferings of the lamb. So, the impenitent tyrant, who is deprived of his horrible power, rages at the wholesome curb, rather than thinks of the amends which he owes to his plundered and outraged fellow-men.
About four hundred rescued slaves, most of them Africans, remained in London. Far away from their friends and relations, without employment and without legal claim for support, most of them suffered and some of them severely. To Granville Sharp, they naturally turned their eyes, and his great heart opened spontaneously to their wants; but his means were inadequate to the demand, and their provisioning became to him a subject of tender care—he called them his "orphans" and showed all a father's spirit towards them. How loathsome was the system of legalized felony still continued in the west, which thus made and kept them exiles and orphans!
There was at this time (1786) in England a benevolent and talented man named Smeatham, who had resided for
Note.—Morgan Godwyn, a British clergyman; John Woolman, an American Friend; and Rev. James Ramsay, should be added to the names elsewhere contained in this memoir, as most nobly instrumental in the holy cause of liberty and love.
