onsidered, and y'e sense and
judgment of this meeting is, that it is not agreeable to
truth for friends to purchase slaves and hold them term of
liffe.

"Nathaniel Starbuck, jun'r is to draw out this meeting's
judgment concerning friends not buying slaves and keeping
them term of liffe, and send it to the next Quarterly
Meeting, and to sign it in y'e meeting's behalf."[377]

Considering the prejudice and persecution that pursued this good
people, their testimony against slavery is very remarkable. In 1729-30
Elihu Coleman of Nantucket, a minister of the society of Friends,
wrote a book against slavery, published in 1733, entitled, "_A
Testimony against that Anti-Christian Practice of_ MAKING SLAVES
OF MEN.[378] It was well written, and the truth fearlessly told
for the conservative, self-seeking period he lived in. He says,--

"I am not unthoughtful of the ferment or stir that such
discourse as this may make among some, who (like Demetrius
of old) may say, by this craft we have our wealth, which
caused the people to cry out with one voice, great is Diana
of the Ephesians, whom all Asia and the world worship."

He examined and refuted the arguments put forth in defence of slavery,
charged slaveholders with idleness, and contended that slavery was the
mother of vice, at war with the laws of nature and of God. Others
caught the spirit of reform, and the agitation movement gained
recruits and strength every year. Felt says, "1765. Pamphlets and
newspapers discuss the subjects of slavery with increasing zeal." The
colonists were aroused. Men were taking one side or the other of a
question of great magnitude. In 1767 an anonymous tract of twenty
octavo pages against slavery made its appearance in Boston. It was
written by Nathaniel Appleton, a co-worker with Otis, and an advanced
thinker on the subject of emancipation. It was in the form of a letter
addressed to a friend, and was entitled, "Considerations on Slavery."
The Rev. Samuel Webster Salisbury published on the 2d of March, 1769,
"An Earnest Address to my Country on Slavery." He opened his article
with an argument showing the inconsistency of a Christian people
holding slaves, pictured the evil results of slavery, and then
asked,--

"What then is to be done? Done! for God's sake break every
yoke and let these oppressed ones _go free without
delay_--let them taste the sweets of that _liber