...slavery in every form and without any compromise or qualification. ' Upon one occasion (says Boswell), when ' in company with some very grave men at Oxford, his ' toast was, " Here 's to the next insurrection of the ' negroes in the West Indies ".' Sterne, writing in 1766,...

...always been very zealous against slavery in every form, in which I, with all deference, thought that he discovered ' a zeal without knowledge.' Upon one...insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.' His fi violent prejudice against our West Indian and American v settlers appeared whenever there was an...

...We have been too quick to forget the horrors which caused Samuel Johnson to give his famous toast: "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies" (Goldwin Smith, '/'//• United Kingdom, voL n. i,in,4. Corruption, thus initiated in one part of public...

...passionate adversary of slavery. Boswell, much to his regret, was constrained to report that Johnson, "upon one occasion, when in company with some very grave men at Oxford," had offered the toast: " 'Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.' "5 Johnson...

...Johnson, a devout Anglican, was passionately against slavery; his biographer James Boswell records that 'Upon one occasion, when in company with some very...insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies."' Johnson said that moral right was being forced to give way to political convenience: 'No man is by...

...always opposed slavery, and once, when he was with "some very grave men at Oxford," his toast had been, "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies." Boswell professed himself shocked. Johnson's "violent prejudice against our West Indian and American...

...for the sake of a poetic conceit. Far from it. In the Life itself we hear Johnson at Oxford toasting 'here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies' and then, a little later, Boswell the narrator sharply marks his distance from his friend on this issue....

...extensively from Anthony Benezet. Other Englishmen took strong stands. Dr. Samuel Johnson toasted, "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies." Even the House of Commons, under Quaker prompting, appointed a commission to look into the slave trade.21...

...Johnson was hostile: he stunned 'some very grave men at Oxford', Boswell reports, by proposing the toast: 'Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies': Hill, Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. iii, p. 200. 124 Vincent Carretta (ed.), Unchained Voices (1996),...

...wealth' (Bate, 1977, 192-3). Boswell has Johnson startling some 'very grave men at Oxford' with the toast 'here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies' (ibid., p. 194). Boswell's attitude was the routine mercantile self-interested one, dressed up as liberal...