ABSTRACT
The son of a military father who died of ‘the country fever’ upon reaching Jamaica, the heterodox clergyman Laurence Sterne (born 1713) popularised the discourse of sensibility and also criticised slavery as pernicious. In a sermon entitled, ‘Job’s Account of the Shortness and Troubles of Life, Considered’, Sterne preached:
Consider how great a part of our species in all ages down to this, have been trod under the feet of cruel and capricious tyrants, who would neither hear their cries, nor pity their distresses.—Consider slavery—what it is,—how bitter a draught, and how many millions have been made to drink of it;— which if it can poison all earthly happiness when exercised barely upon our bodies, what must it be, when it comprehends both the slavery of body and mind? (Sermons of Mr. Yorick, vol. 2, pp. 98–9)
