The Quality of Mercy

36



The barrister for the plaintiff in the Evans case, Harvey, had been joined now by a serjeant-at-law named Compton, who, while not active in the abolitionist movement, was convinced of the evils of slavery and indignant at the mistreatment of Evans. Like Harvey, he was at an early stage in his career and eager to prosecute a case that might set an important precedent. He was a tall, bony man with a prominent jaw and narrow eyes, tenacious in argument, not easily daunted.

After various delays and postponements the Lord Chief Justice had finally decided to refer the case of Jeremy Evans to the Court of King’s Bench, a decision which had surprised Ashton and given him renewed hope of a favorable outcome. A formal hearing before the King’s Bench obliged the presiding judge to give a decisive opinion. Soon after receiving news of it, he and the two lawyers came together at Compton’s chambers at Gray’s Inn to discuss matters and plan a strategy.

“He has committed himself to a definite judgment—he cannot escape it now,” Ashton said. “Perhaps he has had a change of heart.”

“That I greatly doubt,” Compton said. “Unless we are entering upon a new age of miracles. He has more than once expressed the hope that the issue of whether blacks can lawfully be returned by force to the plantations will never finally be settled. It is an ugly matter for him. A good deal of his acquaintance benefits by the trade and will not enjoy any threat to what they regard as their rights, either in the West Indies or here in England.”

Harvey nodded. He was portly for so young a man and high-colored, with a habit of lowering his head at hostile witnesses in court and glancing up threateningly, as if about to charge them. “All the same,” he said, “I think Ashton is right, he cannot avoid a judgment. Strictly speaking, the condition of Evans is still that of a slave. He ran away from his master, he has not been manumitted. So the issue is very clear.”

“He might try to evade the issue by declaring Evans to be free,” Ashton said. “On the grounds that the condition of slavery has been interrupted, and so broken and annulled by his three years as a free man.”

“Too dangerous a precedent, considering the number of runaways in London,” Compton said. “It will suit our case better if there is no doubt of his condition. We will have him declared free by the ruling of the court, not by some convenient argument beforehand.”

“If we have any doubts as to where his lordship’s sympathies lie,” Harvey said, “we only need look at the costs he has laid on Evans.” Like the others, he had been taken aback and angered by this mark of the judge’s bias, the placing of Evans under heavy financial penalties should he fail to appear—a manifest wrong, since Evans was the plaintiff in the case, the one seeking redress for injury. “It is the defendants, this precious couple Bolton and Lyons, who should have had sureties laid upon them, but there is nothing of the sort, they have been excused all obligation. If things go against them, they can have the case withdrawn merely by relinquishing their claim to the ownership of Evans’s person.”

“They will not do so, however,” Ashton said.

“What makes you so sure? In this way they suffer no consequences. They can withdraw their claim with impunity at any time they choose. I suspect that this is what the Lord Chief Justice hopes will be the outcome, leaving the issue comfortably unsettled.”

“You may be right in that. But I am sure they will not withdraw. They will go through with it to the end. To withdraw would be to relinquish right of ownership in Evans, and by extension all right of ownership in former slaves brought to this country who have severed the relation by taking flight. This case has been dragging on for months now, and in that time it has become a vital issue of rights. For them it is a question of fundamental principle. Evans has been purchased, to deny their rig ht in him seems to them like a violation of the laws relating to property, an aggravated form of robbery.”

This confidence was still unshaken when the day of the hearing arrived. He was confident too in the strength of their case. They had the affidavits of two persons who had witnessed the seizure of Evans, and that of the officer who had presented the writ and obtained his release from the ship, where he had been chained to the mast.

Harvey opened the case for the plaintiff before the Lord Chief Justice, who was assisted by Justices Lewis and Stewart, one on either side. He pointed out that the feudal system of serfdom, where people were attached to property, was the only precedent that could be thought applicable to slavery on British soil, though the connection was extremely remote and the practice had been extinct for several centuries.

“Where are the serfs, my lord?” he said. “Where are the inhabitants of this country who are to be regarded as chattels? Is it not the case that everyone residing in this country becomes de facto a subject of His Royal Majesty, King George? Subject to the king, my lord, not to any other person dwelling in this dear land of ours. As subject to the king, is he not therefore subject to the laws that obtain in the king’s realm? British laws, time-honored, refined by a long course of previous judgments. Not the trumped-up laws of Virginia or Jamaica. Where in our law do we find any sanctioning of the institution of slavery? Will the defense claim that colonial legislation regarding slavery can have any force or relevance here? If they will maintain this, let them stand to the question, why should not all such legislation be valid here? Will they tell us where we are to draw the line?”

He was followed by Compton, who reasserted these arguments and expanded on the danger to public order if attempts were made to apply colonial practice to the laws governing land title and voting rights and matrimony and the relation between servant and master in England. “To enlarge upon this by means of example,” he said, “and to give it a more general, I venture to say universal, application, let us suppose that a gentleman from Zululand were to settle here in our midst. He is a Zulu, my lord, in his country the law permits polygamy. Would we countenance this man parading here and there and round about with a number of wives in tow, perhaps among them some of our own countrywomen reduced to concubines, on the patently absurd grounds that such is the law in Zululand?”

At this point the Chief Justice, irritated by this reference to Zulus and wearied already by what he felt to be the undue prolixity of the advocates, announced that, since the case promised to be protracted and the energy and acumen of the court would certainly be needed in high measure, he proposed to adjourn the hearing until the following Monday.