TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD MAYOR, THE ALDERMEN, AND COMMON COUNCIL, OF THE City of London, IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE HIGH AND JUST TRIBUTE OF RESPECT PAID TO THE SUBJECT OF THESE PAGES, BY PLACING HIS BUST IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER OF GUILDHALL, THIS EDITION OF HIS MEMOIRS IS (BY PERMISSION) INSCRIBED. PROSPECTUS AND LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO THE FIRST EDITION. PROSPECTUS. EVER since the decease of MR. GRANVILLE SHARP, it has appeared to be the general wish of his surviving friends, that an honourable Memorial of his Life should be prepared for the Public. To transmit to posterity the remembrance of a character of so great worth, and of a life of such continued action in support of all that is most valuable to mankind, is a tribute, not only due to virtue and to religion, but beneficial also, it may be hoped, to humanity. But the difficulty of the task was not inferior to the duty of its performance. The length and variety of MR. SHARP'S public exertions, the importance of his undertakings, and, above all, the voluminous mass of documents bequeathed by him, from which alone the springs of his actions could be shewn, and his real character delineated, presented a prospect of labour, equally gratifying and overwhelming. His dignified achievements were to be displayed in historical succession, and the reader was to be enabled to trace, in one distinct view, the connected progress and extensive course of his beneficence. His character was to be rendered uniformly perspicuous,—the meek Christian -- the intrepid champion of freedom |