Self Help

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The career of John Howard was throughout a striking illustration of
the same power of patient purpose. His sublime life proved that
even physical weakness could remove mountains in the pursuit of an
end recommended by duty. The idea of ameliorating the condition of
prisoners engrossed his whole thoughts and possessed him like a
passion; and no toil, nor danger, nor bodily suffering could turn
him from that great object of his life. Though a man of no genius
and but moderate talent, his heart was pure and his will was
strong. Even in his own time he achieved a remarkable degree of
success; and his influence did not die with him, for it has
continued powerfully to affect not only the legislation of England,
but of all civilised nations, down to the present hour.

Jonas Hanway was another of the many patient and persevering men
who have made England what it is--content simply to do with energy
the work they have been appointed to do, and go to their rest
thankfully when it is done -

"Leaving no memorial but a world
Made better by their lives."

He was born in 1712, at Portsmouth, where his father, a storekeeper
in the dockyard, being killed by an accident, he was left an orphan
at an early age. His mother removed with her children to London,
where she had them put to school, and struggled hard to bring them
up respectably. At seventeen Jonas was sent to Lisbon to be
apprenticed to a merchant, where his close attention to business,
his punctuality, and his strict honour and integrity, gained for
him the respect and esteem of all who knew him. Returning to
London in 1743, he accepted the offer of a partnership in an
English mercantile house at St. Petersburg engaged in the Caspian
trade, then in its infancy. Hanway went to Russia for the purpose
of extending the business; and shortly after his arrival at the
capital he set out for Persia, with a caravan of English bales of
cloth making twenty carriage loads. At Astracan he sailed for
Astrabad, on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian; but he had
scarcely landed his bales, when an insurrection broke out, his
goods were seized, and though he afterwards recovered the principal
part of them, the fruits of his enterprise were in a great measure
lost. A plot was set on foot to seize himself and his party; so he
took to sea and, after encountering great perils, reached Ghilan in
safety. His escape on this occasion gave him the first idea of the
words which he afterwards adopted as the motto of his life--"NEVER
DESPAIR." He afterwards resided in St. Petersburg for five years,
carrying on a prosperous business. But a relative having left him
some property, and his own means being considerable, he left
Russia, and arrived in his native country in 1755. His object in
returning to England was, as he himself expressed it, "to consult
his own health (which was extremely delicate), and do as much good
to himself and others as he was able." The rest of his life was
spent in deeds of active benevolence and usefulness to his fellow
men. He lived in a quiet style, in order that he might employ a
larger share of his income in works of benevolence. One of the
first public improvements to which he devoted himself was that of
the highways of the metropolis, in which he succeeded to a large
extent. The rumour of a French invasion being prevalent in 1755,
Mr. Hanway turned his attention to the best mode of keeping up the
supply of seamen. He summoned a meeting of merchants and
shipowners at the Royal Exchange, and there proposed to them to
form themselves into a society for fitting out landsmen volunteers
and boys, to serve on board the king's ships. The proposal was
received with enthusiasm: a society was formed, and officers were
appointed, Mr. Hanway directing its entire operations. The result
was the establishment in 1756 of The Marine Society, an institution
which has proved of much national advantage, and is to this day of
great and substantial utility. Within six years from its
formation, 5451 boys and 4787 landsmen volunteers had been trained
and fitted out by the society and added to the navy, and to this
day it is in active operation, about 600 poor boys, after a careful
education, being annually apprenticed as sailors, principally in
the merchant service.

Mr. Hanway devoted the other portions of his spare time to
improving or establishing important public institutions in the
metropolis. From an early period he took an active interest in the
Foundling Hospital, which had been started by Thomas Coram many
years before, but which, by encouraging parents to abandon their
children to the charge of a charity, was threatening to do more
harm than good. He determined to take steps to stem the evil,
entering upon the work in the face of the fashionable philanthropy
of the time; but by holding to his purpose he eventually succeeded
in bringing the charity back to its proper objects; and time and
experience have proved that he was right. The Magdalen Hospital
was also established in a great measure through Mr. Hanway's
exertions. But his most laborious and persevering efforts were in
behalf of the infant parish poor. The misery and neglect amidst
which the children of the parish poor then grew up, and the
mortality which prevailed amongst them, were frightful; but there
was no fashionable movement on foot to abate the suffering, as in
the case of the foundlings. So Jonas Hanway summoned his energies
to the task. Alone and unassisted he first ascertained by personal
inquiry the extent of the evil. He explored the dwellings of the
poorest classes in London, and visited the poorhouse sick wards, by
which he ascertained the management in detail of every workhouse in
and near the metropolis. He next made a journey into France and
through Holland, visiting the houses for the reception of the poor,
and noting whatever he thought might be adopted at home with
advantage. He was thus employed for five years; and on his return
to England he published the results of his observations. The
consequence was that many of the workhouses were reformed and
improved. In 1761 he obtained an Act obliging every London parish
to keep an annual register of all the infants received, discharged,
and dead; and he took care that the Act should work, for he himself
superintended its working with indefatigable watchfulness. He went
about from workhouse to workhouse in the morning, and from one
member of parliament to another in the afternoon, for day after
day, and for year after year, enduring every rebuff, answering
every objection, and accommodating himself to every humour. At
length, after a perseverance hardly to be equalled, and after
nearly ten years' labour, he obtained another Act, at his sole
expense (7 Geo. III. c. 39), directing that all parish infants
belonging to the parishes within the bills of mortality should not
be nursed in the workhouses, but be sent to nurse a certain number
of miles out of town, until they were six years old, under the care
of guardians to be elected triennially. The poor people called
this "the Act for keeping children alive;" and the registers for
the years which followed its passing, as compared with those which
preceded it, showed that thousands of lives had been preserved
through the judicious interference of this good and sensible man.

Wherever a philanthropic work was to be done in London, be sure
that Jonas Hanway's hand was in it. One of the first Acts for the
protection of chimney-sweepers' boys was obtained through his
influence. A destructive fire at Montreal, and another at
Bridgetown, Barbadoes, afforded him the opportunity for raising a
timely subscription for the relief of the sufferers. His name
appeared in every list, and his disinterestedness and sincerity
were universally recognized. But he was not suffered to waste his
little fortune entirely in the service of others. Five leading
citizens of London, headed by Mr. Hoare, the banker, without Mr.
Hanway's knowledge, waited on Lord Bute, then prime minister, in a
body, and in the names of their fellow-citizens requested that some
notice might be taken of this good man's disinterested services to
his country. The result was, his appointment shortly after, as one
of the commissioners for victualling the navy.

Towards the close of his life Mr. Hanway's health became very
feeble, and although he found it necessary to resign his office at
the Victualling Board, he could not be idle; but laboured at the
establishment of Sunday Schools,--a movement then in its infancy,--
or in relieving poor blacks, many of whom wandered destitute about
the streets of the metropolis,--or, in alleviating the sufferings
of some neglected and destitute class of society. Notwithstanding
his familiarity with misery in all its shapes, he was one of the
most cheerful of beings; and, but for his cheerfulness he could
never, with so delicate a frame, have got through so vast an amount
of self-imposed work. He dreaded nothing so much as inactivity.
Though fragile, he was bold and indefatigable; and his moral
courage was of the first order. It may be regarded as a trivial
matter to mention that he was the first who ventured to walk the
streets of London with an umbrella over his head. But let any
modern London merchant venture to walk along Cornhill in a peaked
Chinese hat, and he will find it takes some degree of moral courage
to persevere in it. After carrying an umbrella for thirty years,
Mr. Hanway saw the article at length come into general use.

Hanway was a man of strict honour, truthfulness, and integrity; and
every word he said might be relied upon. He had so great a
respect, amounting almost to a reverence, for the character of the
honest merchant, that it was the only subject upon which he was
ever seduced into a eulogium. He strictly practised what he
professed, and both as a merchant, and afterwards as a commissioner
for victualling the navy, his conduct was without stain. He would
not accept the slightest favour of any sort from a contractor; and
when any present was sent to him whilst at the Victualling Office,
he would politely return it, with the intimation that "he had made
it a rule not to accept anything from any person engaged with the
office." When he found his powers failing, he prepared for death
with as much cheerfulness as he would have prepared himself for a
journey into the country. He sent round and paid all his
tradesmen, took leave of his friends, arranged his affairs, had his
person neatly disposed of, and parted with life serenely and
peacefully in his 74th year. The property which he left did not
amount to two thousand pounds, and, as he had no relatives who
wanted it, he divided it amongst sundry orphans and poor persons
whom he had befriended during his lifetime. Such, in brief, was
the beautiful life of Jonas Hanway,--as honest, energetic, hard-
working, and true-hearted a man as ever lived.

The life of Granville Sharp is another striking example of the same
power of individual energy--a power which was afterwards transfused
into the noble band of workers in the cause of Slavery Abolition,
prominent among whom were Clarkson, Wilberforce, Buxton, and
Brougham. But, giants though these men were in this cause,
Granville Sharp was the first, and perhaps the greatest of them
all, in point of perseverance, energy, and intrepidity. He began
life as apprentice to a linen-draper on Tower Hill; but, leaving
that business after his apprenticeship was out, he next entered as
a clerk in the Ordnance Office; and it was while engaged in that
humble occupation that he carried on in his spare hours the work of
Negro Emancipation. He was always, even when an apprentice, ready
to undertake any amount of volunteer labour where a useful purpose
was to be served. Thus, while learning the linen-drapery business,
a fellow apprentice who lodged in the same house, and was a
Unitarian, led him into frequent discussions on religious subjects.
The Unitarian youth insisted that Granville's Trinitarian
misconception of certain passages of Scripture arose from his want
of acquaintance with the Greek tongue; on which he immediately set
to work in his evening hours, and shortly acquired an intimate
knowledge of Greek. A similar controversy with another fellow-
apprentice, a Jew, as to the interpretation of the prophecies, led
him in like manner to undertake and overcome the difficulties of
Hebrew.

But the circumstance which gave the bias and direction to the main
labours of his life originated in his generosity and benevolence.
His brother William, a surgeon in Mincing Lane, gave gratuitous
advice to the poor, and amongst the numerous applicants for relief
at his surgery was a poor African named Jonathan Strong. It
appeared that the negro had been brutally treated by his master, a
Barbadoes lawyer then in London, and became lame, almost blind, and
unable to work; on which his owner, regarding him as of no further
value as a chattel, cruelly turned him adrift into the streets to
starve. This poor man, a mass of disease, supported himself by
begging for a time, until he found his way to William Sharp, who
gave him some medicine, and shortly after got him admitted to St.
Bartholomew's hospital, where he was cured. On coming out of the
hospital, the two brothers supported the negro in order to keep him
off the streets, but they had not the least suspicion at the time
that any one had a claim upon his person. They even succeeded in
obtaining a situation for Strong with an apothecary, in whose
service he remained for two years; and it was while he was
attending his mistress behind a hackney coach, that his former
owner, the Barbadoes lawyer, recognized him, and determined to
recover possession of the slave, again rendered valuable by the
restoration of his health. The lawyer employed two of the Lord
Mayor's officers to apprehend Strong, and he was lodged in the
Compter, until he could be shipped off to the West Indies. The
negro, bethinking him in his captivity of the kind services which
Granville Sharp had rendered him in his great distress some years
before, despatched a letter to him requesting his help. Sharp had
forgotten the name of Strong, but he sent a messenger to make
inquiries, who returned saying that the keepers denied having any
such person in their charge. His suspicions were roused, and he
went forthwith to the prison, and insisted upon seeing Jonathan
Strong. He was admitted, and recognized the poor negro, now in
custody as a recaptured slave. Mr. Sharp charged the master of the
prison at his own peril not to deliver up Strong to any person
whatever, until he had been carried before the Lord Mayor, to whom
Sharp immediately went, and obtained a summons against those
persons who had seized and imprisoned Strong without a warrant.
The parties appeared before the Lord Mayor accordingly, and it
appeared from the proceedings that Strong's former master had
already sold him to a new one, who produced the bill of sale and
claimed the negro as his property. As no charge of offence was
made against Strong, and as the Lord Mayor was incompetent to deal
with the legal question of Strong's liberty or otherwise, he
discharged him, and the slave followed his benefactor out of court,
no one daring to touch him. The man's owner immediately gave Sharp
notice of an action to recover possession of his negro slave, of
whom he declared he had been robbed.

About that time (1767), the personal liberty of the Englishman,
though cherished as a theory, was subject to grievous
infringements, and was almost daily violated. The impressment of
men for the sea service was constantly practised, and, besides the
press-gangs, there were regular bands of kidnappers employed in
London and all the large towns of the kingdom, to seize men for the
East India Company's service. And when the men were not wanted for
India, they were shipped off to the planters in the American
colonies. Negro slaves were openly advertised for sale in the
London and Liverpool newspapers. Rewards were offered for
recovering and securing fugitive slaves, and conveying them down to
certain specified ships in the river.

The position of the reputed slave in England was undefined and
doubtful. The judgments which had been given in the courts of law
were fluctuating and various, resting on no settled principle.
Although it was a popular belief that no slave could breathe in
England, there were legal men of eminence who expressed a directly
contrary opinion. The lawyers to whom Mr. Sharp resorted for
advice, in defending himself in the action raised against him in
the case of Jonathan Strong, generally concurred in this view, and
he was further told by Jonathan Strong's owner, that the eminent
Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, and all the leading counsel, were
decidedly of opinion that the slave, by coming into England, did
not become free, but might legally be compelled to return again to
the plantations. Such information would have caused despair in a
mind less courageous and earnest than that of Granville Sharp; but
it only served to stimulate his resolution to fight the battle of
the negroes' freedom, at least in England. "Forsaken," he said,
"by my professional defenders, I was compelled, through the want of
regular legal assistance, to make a hopeless attempt at self-
defence, though I was totally unacquainted either with the practice
of the law or the foundations of it, having never opened a law book
(except the Bible) in my life, until that time, when I most
reluctantly undertook to search the indexes of a law library, which
my bookseller had lately purchased."

The whole of his time during the day was occupied with the business
of the ordnance department, where he held the most laborious post
in the office; he was therefore under the necessity of conducting
his new studies late at night or early in the morning. He
confessed that he was himself becoming a sort of slave. Writing to
a clerical friend to excuse himself for delay in replying to a
letter, he said, "I profess myself entirely incapable of holding a
literary correspondence. What little time I have been able to save
from sleep at night, and early in the morning, has been necessarily
employed in the examination of some points of law, which admitted
of no delay, and yet required the most diligent researches and
examination in my study."

Mr. Sharp gave up every leisure moment that he could command during
the next two years, to the close study of the laws of England
affecting personal liberty,--wading through an immense mass of dry
and repulsive literature, and making extracts of all the most
important Acts of Parliament, decisions of the courts, and opinions
of eminent lawyers, as he went along. In this tedious and
protracted inquiry he had no instructor, nor assistant, nor
adviser. He could not find a single lawyer whose opinion was
favourable to his undertaking. The results of his inquiries were,
however, as gratifying to himself, as they were surprising to the
gentlemen of the law. "God be thanked," he wrote, "there is
nothing in any English law or statute--at least that I am able to
find out--that can justify the enslaving of others." He had
planted his foot firm, and now he doubted nothing. He drew up the
result of his studies in a summary form; it was a plain, clear, and
manly statement, entitled, 'On the Injustice of Tolerating Slavery
in England;' and numerous copies, made by himself, were circulated
by him amongst the most eminent lawyers of the time. Strong's
owner, finding the sort of man he had to deal with, invented
various pretexts for deferring the suit against Sharp, and at
length offered a compromise, which was rejected. Granville went on
circulating his manuscript tract among the lawyers, until at length
those employed against Jonathan Strong were deterred from
proceeding further, and the result was, that the plaintiff was
compelled to pay treble costs for not bringing forward his action.
The tract was then printed in 1769.

In the mean time other cases occurred of the kidnapping of negroes
in London, and their shipment to the West Indies for sale.
Wherever Sharp could lay hold of any such case, he at once took
proceedings to rescue the negro. Thus the wife of one Hylas, an
African, was seized, and despatched to Barbadoes; on which Sharp,
in the name of Hylas, instituted legal proceedings against the
aggressor, obtained a verdict with damages, and Hylas's wife was
brought back to England free.

Another forcible capture of a negro, attended with great cruelty,
having occurred in 1770, he immediately set himself on the track of
the aggressors. An African, named Lewis, was seized one dark night
by two watermen employed by the person who claimed the negro as his
property, dragged into the water, hoisted into a boat, where he was
gagged, and his limbs were tied; and then rowing down river, they
put him on board a ship bound for Jamaica, where he was to be sold
for a slave upon his arrival in the island. The cries of the poor
negro had, however, attracted the attention of some neighbours; one
of whom proceeded direct to Mr. Granville Sharp, now known as the
negro's friend, and informed him of the outrage. Sharp immediately
got a warrant to bring back Lewis, and he proceeded to Gravesend,
but on arrival there the ship had sailed for the Downs. A writ of
Habeas Corpus was obtained, sent down to Spithead, and before the
ship could leave the shores of England the writ was served. The
slave was found chained to the main-mast bathed in tears, casting
mournful looks on the land from which he was about to be torn. He
was immediately liberated, brought back to London, and a warrant
was issued against the author of the outrage. The promptitude of
head, heart, and hand, displayed by Mr. Sharp in this transaction
could scarcely have been surpassed, and yet he accused himself of
slowness. The case was tried before Lord Mansfield--whose opinion,
it will be remembered, had already been expressed as decidedly
opposed to that entertained by Granville Sharp. The judge,
however, avoided bringing the question to an issue, or offering any
opinion on the legal question as to the slave's personal liberty or
otherwise, but discharged the negro because the defendant could
bring no evidence that Lewis was even nominally his property.

The question of the personal liberty of the negro in England was
therefore still undecided; but in the mean time Mr. Sharp continued
steady in his benevolent course, and by his indefatigable exertions
and promptitude of action, many more were added to the list of the
rescued. At length the important case of James Somerset occurred;
a case which is said to have been selected, at the mutual desire of
Lord Mansfield and Mr. Sharp, in order to bring the great question
involved to a clear legal issue. Somerset had been brought to
England by his master, and left there. Afterwards his master
sought to apprehend him and send him off to Jamaica, for sale. Mr.
Sharp, as usual, at once took the negro's case in hand, and
employed counsel to defend him. Lord Mansfield intimated that the
case was of such general concern, that he should take the opinion
of all the judges upon it. Mr. Sharp now felt that he would have
to contend with all the force that could be brought against him,
but his resolution was in no wise shaken. Fortunately for him, in
this severe struggle, his exertions had already begun to tell:
increasing interest was taken in the question, and many eminent
legal gentlemen openly declared themselves to be upon his side.

The cause of personal liberty, now at stake, was fairly tried
before Lord Mansfield, assisted by the three justices,--and tried
on the broad principle of the essential and constitutional right of
every man in England to the liberty of his person, unless forfeited
by the law. It is unnecessary here to enter into any account of
this great trial; the arguments extended to a great length, the
cause being carried over to another term,--when it was adjourned
and re-adjourned,--but at length judgment was given by Lord
Mansfield, in whose powerful mind so gradual a change had been
worked by the arguments of counsel, based mainly on Granville
Sharp's tract, that he now declared the court to be so clearly of
one opinion, that there was no necessity for referring the case to
the twelve judges. He then declared that the claim of slavery
never can be supported; that the power claimed never was in use in
England, nor acknowledged by the law; therefore the man James
Somerset must be discharged. By securing this judgment Granville
Sharp effectually abolished the Slave Trade until then carried on
openly in the streets of Liverpool and London. But he also firmly
established the glorious axiom, that as soon as any slave sets his
foot on English ground, that moment he becomes free; and there can
be no doubt that this great decision of Lord Mansfield was mainly
owing to Mr. Sharp's firm, resolute, and intrepid prosecution of
the cause from the beginning to the end.

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