Somersett was heard, and no motion for its suppression had ever been
submitted to Parliament; while it was forced upon and maintained in
unwilling colonies by the Parliament and Crown of England at that
moment. Fifteen thousand negro slaves were then living in that island,
where they had been introduced under the counsel of the most
illustrious jurists of the realm, and such slaves had been publicly
sold for near a century in the markets of London. In the northern part
of the kingdom of Great Britain there existed a class of from 30,000
to 40,000 persons, of whom the Parliament said, in 1775, (15 George
III, chap. 28,) "many colliers, coal-heavers, and salters, are in a
state of slavery or bondage, bound to the collieries and salt works,
where they work for life, transferable with the collieries and salt
works when their original masters have no use for them; and whereas
the emancipating or setting free the colliers, coal-heavers, and
salters, in Scotland, who are now in a state of servitude, gradually
and upon reasonable conditions, would be the means of increasing the
number of colliers, coal-heavers, and salters, to the great benefit of
the public, without doing any injury to the present masters, and would
remove the reproach of allowing such a state of servitude to exist in
a free country," &c.; and again, in 1799, "they declare that many
colliers and coal-heavers still continue in a state of bondage." No
statute, from the Conquest till the 15 George III, had been passed
upon the subject of personal slavery. These facts have led the most
eminent civilian of England to question the accuracy of this judgment,
and to insinuate that in this judgment the offence of _ampliare
jurisdictionem_ by private authority was committed by the eminent
magistrate who pronounced it.

This sentence is distinguishable from those cited from the French
courts in this: that there positive prohibitions existed against
slavery, and the right to freedom was conferred on the immigrant slave
by positive law; whereas here the consequences of slavery merely--that
is, the public policy--were found to be contrary to the law of
slavery. The case of the slave Grace, (2 Hagg.,) with four others,
came before Lord Stowell in 1827, by appeals from the West India vice
admiralty courts. They were cases of slaves who had returned to those
islands, after a residence in Great Britain, and where the claim to
freedom was first presented in the colonial forum. T