Before the year 1700, planters, merchants, and others, resident in the
West Indies, but coming to England, were accustomed to bring with them
certain slaves to act as servants with them during their stay. The
latter, seeing the freedom and the happiness of servants in this
country, and considering what would be their own hard fate on their
return to the islands, frequently absconded. Their masters of course
made search after them, and often had them seized and carried away by
force. It was, however, thrown out by many on these occasions, that the
English laws did not sanction such proceedings, for that all persons who
were baptized became free. The consequence of this was, that most of the
slaves, who came over with their masters, prevailed upon some pious
clergyman to baptize them. They took of course godfathers of such
citizens as had the generosity to espouse their cause. When they were
seized they usually sent to these, if they had an opportunity, for their
protection. And in the result, their godfathers, maintaining that they
had been baptized, and that they were free on this account as well as by
the general tenour of the law of England, dared those who had taken
possession of them to send them out of the kingdom.

The planters, merchants, and others, being thus circumstanced, knew not
what to do. They were afraid of taking their slaves away by force, and
they were equally afraid of bringing any of the cases before a public
court. In this dilemma, in 1729, they applied to York and Talbot, the
attorney and solicitor-general for the time being, and obtained the
following strange opinion from them:--"We are of opinion, that a slave
by coming from the West Indies into Great Britain or Ireland, either
with or without his master, does not become free, and that his master's
right and property in him is not thereby determined or varied, and that
baptism doth not bestow freedom on him, nor make any alteration in his
temporal condition in these kingdoms. We are also of opinion, that the