Sandford and Merton

THOMAS DAY Sandford and Merton Thomas Day was born in London on June 22, 1748, and educated at the Charterhouse and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Entering the Middle Temple in 1765, he was called to the Bar ten years later, but never practised. A contemporary and disciple of Rousseau, he convinced himself that human suffering was, in the main, the result of the artificial arrangements of society, and inheriting a fortune at an early age he spent large sums in philanthropy. A poem written by him in 1773, entitled "The Dying Negro," has been described as supplying the keynote of the anti-slavery movement. His "History of Sandford and Merton," published in three volumes between the years 1783 and 1789, provided a channel through which many generations of English people have imbibed a kind of refined Rousseauism.