But the end was not yet. By this accidental and disinterested act of humanity Sharp was exposed at the same time to personal insult and to a suit at law. The discomfited claimant--the same lawyer who had originally abandoned the slave in the streets of London--called on him "to demand gentlemanlike satisfaction"; to which the philanthropist replied, that, as "he had studied the law so many years, he should want no satisfaction that the law could give him." And he nobly redeemed his word; for he applied himself at once to his defence against the legal process instituted by the claimant for an alleged abstraction of _property_. Here begins his greatness. It is in collision with difficulty that the sparks of genuine character appear. This simple-hearted man, now vindictively pursued, laid his case before an eminent solicitor, who, after ample consideration with learned counsel, among whom was the celebrated Sir James Eyre, did not hesitate to assure him, that, under the British Constitution, he could not be defended against the action. An opinion given in 1729, by the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General of the time, Yorke and Talbot,--two great names in the English law, and each afterwards Lord Chancellor,--was adduced, declaring, under their respective signatures, "that a slave, by coming from the West Indies to Great Britain or Ireland, either with or without his master, _doth not_ become free," and "that the master may legally compel him to return to the plantations"; and Lord Mansfield, the Chief Justice, was reported as strenuously concurring in this opinion, to the odious extent of delivering up fugitive slaves to their claimants. With these authorities against him, and forsaken by professional defenders, Sharp was not disheartened; but, though, according to his own striking language, "totally unacquainted either with the practice of the law or the foundations of it, having never in his life opened a law-book except the Bible," he was inspired to depend on himself. An unconquerable will, and instincts often profounder in their teaching than any learning, were now his counsellors. For nearly two years, during which the suit was still pending, he gave himself to intense study of the British Constitution in all its bearings upon human liberty. During these researches he was confirmed in his original prepossessions, and aroused to undying hostility against Slavery, which he plainly saw to be without any sanction in the Constitution. "_The word_ SLAVES," he wrote, "_or anything that can justify the enslaving of others, is not to be found there, God be thanked!_"[147] And I, too, say, God be thanked! [147] Memoirs, p. 38.