The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in.'' This
phrase, with slight variations, recurs through long years in the
rhetoric of movements to abolish first African slavery within
England, then the Atlantic traffic in African people that
England dominated for more than a century and then the
institution of slavery in the British Empire, whose populations
included hundreds of thousands of slaves. It is an axiom
traditionally believed to have been invoked in 1772, in
principle if not verbatim, by Lord Mansfield, the judge in
Somerset v. Steuart, which Steven M. Wise in ''Though the
Heavens May Fall'' calls the ''trial that led to the end of
human slavery.'' Somerset was an African who accompanied
Steuart, his owner, to England. He escaped, was recaptured and
sued successfully for his freedom.["Bury the Chains: Both Wise
and Adam Hochschild Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an
Empire's Slaves"] celebrate this trial and the events and
personalities that brought it about. No doubt they should. I