James Stout

Right.

And Equiano is too, to be honest, they're both like, Jesus Christ.

Like, I wouldn't believe you if you were in a story.

Um,

So Sharpe's primary focus in the years after the Strong case was in expanding his studies as a lawyer so he could make an unimpeachable legal case for banning slavery.

In 1769, he publishes a tract titled A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery or of Admitting the Least Claim of Private Property in the Persons of Men in England.

He wasn't good at titling.

He was good at a lot of stuff but not titles.

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.