56 all colliers were 'declared to be free from their servitude.' The last of these emancipated slaves died in the year 1844. Tranent and its Surroundings, by P. M'Neill, p. 26. See also Parl. Hist. xxix. 1109, where Dundas states that it was only 'after several years' struggle that the bill was carried through both Houses.'
[576] See ante, ii. 13.
[577] 'The Utopians do not make slaves of the sons of their slaves; the slaves among them are such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime.' Sir T. More's Utopia--Ideal Commonwealths, p. 129.
[578] The Rev. John Newton (Cowper's friend) in 1763 wrote of the slave-trade, in which he had been engaged, 'It is indeed accounted a genteel employment, and is usually very profitable, though to me it did not prove so, the Lord seeing that a large increase of wealth could not be good for me.' Newton's Life, p. 148. A ruffian of a London Alderman, a few weeks before The Life of Johnson was published, said in parliament:--'The abolition of the trade would destroy our Newfoundland fishery, which the slaves in the West Indies supported by consuming that part of the fish which was fit for no other consumption, and consequently, by cutting off the great source of seamen, annihilate our marine.' Parl. Hist. xxix. 343.
[579] Gray's Elegy. Mrs. Piozzi maintained that 'mercy was totally abolished by French maxims; for, if all men are equal, mercy is no more.' Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 370. Johnson, in 1740, described slavery as 'the most calamitous estate in human life,' a state 'which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.' Works, v. 265-6. Nineteen years later he wrote of the discoveries of the Portuguese:--'Much knowledge has been acquired, and much cruelty been committed; the belief of religion has been very little propagated, and its laws have been outrageously and enormously violated.' Ib. p. 219. Horace Walpole wrote, on July 9, 1754, (Letters, ii. 394), 'I was reading t'other day the Life of Colonel Codrington. He left a large estate for the propagation of the Gospel, and ordered that three hundred negroes should constantly be employed upon it. Did one ever hear a more truly Christian charity than keeping up a perpetuity of three hundred slaves to look after the Gospel's estate?' Churchill, in Gotham, published in 1764 (Poems, ii. 101), says of Europe's treatment of the savage race:--
'Faith too she plants, for her own ends imprest, To make them bear the worst, and hope the best.'
[580]
'With stainless lustre virtue shines, A base repulse nor knows nor fears;
Nor claims her honours, nor declines, As the light air of crowds uncertain veers.' FRANCIS. Horace Odes, iii. 2.
[581] Sir Walter Scott, in a note to Redgauntlet, Letter 1, says:-- 'Sir John Nisbett of Dirleton's Doubts and Questions upon the Law especially of Scotland, and Sir James Stewart's Dirleton's Doubts and Questions resolved and answered, are works of authority in Scottish jurisprudence. As is generally the case, the Doubts are held more in respect than the solution.'
[582] When Boswell first made Johnson's acquaintance it was he who suffered from the late hours. Ante, i. 434.
[583] See ante, ii. 312.
[584] Burke, in Present Discontents, says:--'The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less odium, under the name of Influence.' Influence he explains as 'the method of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration.' Payne's Burke, i. 10, 11. 'Influence,' said Johnson,' must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 18. To political life might be applied what Johnson wrote of domestic life:--'It is a maxim that no man ever was enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.' Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 343.
[585] Boswell falls into what he calls 'the cant transmitted from age to age in praise of the ancient Romans.' Ante, i. 311. To do so with Johnson was at once to provoke an attack, for he looked upon the Roman commonwealth as one 'which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind.' Ib. Moreover he disliked appeals to history. 'General history,' writes Murphy (Life, p. 138), 'had little of his regard. Biography was his delight. Sooner than hear of the Punic War he would be rude to the person that introduced the subject.' Mrs. Piozzi says (Anec. p. 80) that 'no kind of conversation pleased him less, I think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity. 'What shall we learn from that stuff?' said he. 'He never,' as he expressed it, 'desired to hear of the Punic War while he lived.' The Punic War, it is clear, was a kind of humorous catch word with him. She wrote to him in 1773:--'So here's modern politics in a letter from me; yes and a touch of the Punic War too.' Piozzi Letters, i. 187. He wrote to her in 1775, just after she had been at the first regatta held in England:--'You will now find the advantage of having made one at the regatta....