“The System of Colonial Law” Compared with the Eternal Laws of God; and with the Indispensable Principles of the English Constitution.

A stalwart of English abolitionism

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Important anti-slavery tract by a leading British abolitionist, Granville Sharp (1735–1813). The tract was published shortly before Parliament passed the An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807). Sharp here answers the objections of the “West Indian Planters and Merchants” who proposed the gradual abolition of slavery saying that doing otherwise would “...violate the System of ‘Colonial Law’...”

When the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787, Sharp was one of only three non-Quaker co-founders. “[H]is work was of immense importance to the anti-slavery movement in Britain. It was partly through his efforts that it gained public attention and sympathy and that it transformed itself from a benign climate of opinion to a highly organized campaign. Thomas Clarkson regarded him as a founder of the movement…” (ODNB)

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