£ s. d.
Lost by his death in
this Essay 1 11 6
Gained in Elegies £2.2
in Essays £3.3
——
5 5 0
——————-
Am glad he is dead by £3 13 6
D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, i. 54.
[575] At the time that Johnson wrote this there were serfs in Scotland. An Act passed in 1775 (15 Geo. III. c. 22) contains the following preamble:—'Whereas by the law of Scotland, as explained by the judges of the courts of law there, many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries or saltworks where they work for life, transferable with the coalwork and salteries,' etc. The Act was ineffectual in giving relief, and in 1779 by 39 Geo. III. c. 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;