laves, from a sense of religious duty; and it seems to us, that
those of the present day have great responsibilities resting
upon them; and that it especially becomes them to see to it that
their light is not hidden in this hour of darkness and
prejudice, on the subject of human rights. The slaveholder and
his victim both look to them;--the one with deprecating gesture,
and words of flattery--the other in beseeching and half
reproachful earnestness. We cannot doubt that the agonizing
appeal of the latter is listened to by all who truly feel the
weight of their religious testimonies resting upon them; and we
trust there will be found among them, an increasing zeal to
secure to these unhappy victims of avarice and the lust of
power, that liberty which George Fox, two centuries in advance
of his contemporaries, declared to be 'the right of all men.'"
When the assembly broke up, the clerk of the Yearly Meeting, who sat by
us, expressed to me his entire satisfaction with the proceedings, as did
others present. One influential member of the Society, however, who met
me the next day in the street, stated very decidedly his disapprobation
of the tenor of certain parts of my address; but I found that he
condemned me on hearsay evidence, not having attended the meeting
himself. On the 29th, I was favored with a call from Lieutenant Governor
Cunningham, of St. Kitts, on his way to England, who gave a very
favorable account of the continued good conduct of the emancipated
slaves in that Island. It is surely an eminent token of the divine
blessing on a national act of justice and mercy, that evidence of this
kind should have been so abundantly and uniformly supplied from every
colony where slavery has been abolished. A fine black man was brought to
me about this time, who showed me papers by which it appeared he had
lately given one thousand five hundred dollars for his freedom. He had
since been driven from the State in which he lived, by the operation of
a law, enacted to prevent the continued residence of free people of
color, and has thus been banished from a wife and family, who are still
slaves. He has agreed with their owner, that if he can pay two thousand
five hundred dollars, in six years, his wife and six children shall be
free, and he was then trying to get employment in New York, in the hope
of being able to raise this large sum within the specified time.
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