Date: 1782

"Disdainful of those little arts that bind, / In slavish trammels, the inferior mind, / No stage finesse her action shall disgrace, / To trick a generous audience out of praise; / But Truth, and Nature, shall still plead her cause, / And win the tribute of a just applause."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1782

"He [the slave] feels his body's bondage in his mind, / Puts off his generous nature, and, to suit / His manners with his fate, puts on the brute."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"The pride of letter'd ignorance, that binds / In chains of error our accomplish'd minds, / That decks with all the splendour of the true, / A false religion, is unknown to you."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: August 1783

"Death broke at once the vital chain, / And free'd his soul the nearest way."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1783

"The enemy fight in chains, invisible chains, but heavy; / Their minds are fetter'd; then how can they be free, / While, like the mounting flame, / We spring to battle o'er the floods of death?"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1784

"Had I the dread necessity explained, / That with resistless force my freedom chained; / Tore the sweet bands, by virtuous passion tied, / And stampt our constancy with parricide."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1785

"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

Date: 1785

"While affection fond as fair, / Forms a chain of every hair, / A chain, which round the willing mind, / Sensibility shall bind."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1785

"In fetters confined Our body complains, / Oppress'd is our mind , With heavier chains."

— Wesley, Charles (1707-1788)

Date: 1787

"What force can free the mind that Vice has chain'd, / Or clear the current if the fountain's stain'd?"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)