h direct violation of the
whole moral law, and of the righteousness of the New Testament,
and that in a day in which the principles of civil and religious
liberty are so fully acknowledged in many of the nations of
Christendom, may well excite both indignation and sorrow. And we
cannot but regard it as such proof of hardness of heart, and
perverted understanding, that we think it can be attributed to
nothing short of the deceivableness of Satan working upon the
fallen nature of man.

"It was, dear friends, in the gradual unfolding of that light in
which the things that are reproved are made manifest, that your
forefathers and ours, were brought to see the criminality of
slavery. Thus enlightened, they could find no peace with God,
until they had put away this evil of their doings from before
his eyes--until by a conscientious discharge of their individual
religious duty, they had restored those whom they held in
bondage, to the full enjoyment of unqualified freedom. Under the
influence of Divine wisdom, and by this faithfulness on the part
of upright Friends, our religious society were brought to a
united and settled judgment as a body, that personal slavery,
both in its origin and its results, was so great an evil, that
it could be tolerated by no mitigation of its hardship; and they
felt the demands of equity to be so urgent upon them, that they
were concerned to enjoin it upon Friends every where, by a ready
compliance with such reasonable duty, to cease to do evil, by
immediately releasing those they held as slaves. Their own hands
being cleansed from this pollution, they felt it to be laid upon
them, plainly and faithfully, to labor with their countrymen to
bring them to a full understanding of the requiring of the
Divine law, and to press it upon them to act up to its
commandments. In the love of God, they were bold, both in your
country and in ours, to plead the cause of the oppressed with
those in power. We believe, and we would wish to speak of it
with modesty and humility, that their faithfulness, in
connection with the exertions of humane and devoted men of other
Christian communities, were instrumental to bring about the
abolition of the slave trade, as well as the extinction of
slavery.

"We are reverently impressed with a sense of the prerogatives of