James Stout

Yeah.

This became one of the first popular arguments against the system of slavery in England, not just arguing that it was immoral but that it was foreign to the spirit and intention of British law and cultural values, right?

That's a key part of his argument is that like this isn't really English, right?

Like we shouldn't – based on the things we say about our shared values, this is not a natural thing for us to be doing, right?

Why are we so committed to this?

Is it just venal profit?

It is.

Yeah.

I wonder if there's a modern analogy for that, Robert.

What's interesting here, though, is that Sharp is not just wish-casting a legal argument, right?

His extensive study of the law had found precedent as far back as 1569 for the assertion that slavery was not legal on British soil.

Now, I'm not going to go into detail about centuries-old British court rulings and rulings of kings and shit.

But there are cases from the 1600s to the 1700s that back up this argument.

And one thing that was definitely true is that no law was ever passed in England to make it legal to own Africans.

That's never – there's never like a law that just says you can do this.

People just start doing it and they're like, well, I guess this is property.

Yeah.

It's happening now.

Yeah.

The best pro-slavery advocates could do is point out a 1729 legal opinion in which an attorney general had argued that the legal status of a slave didn't change just because they set foot in England, right?