eeting this year_."

APPENDIX B. P. 30.

EARLY EFFORTS OF "FRIENDS" IN BEHALF OF NEGRO SLAVES.

The following extract from Clarkson's "Memoirs of the Public and Private
Life of William Penn," will show how the society of Friends, at a very
early period, became unwarily entangled with the practice of slave
holding; and also that the unchristian nature of it was immediately
perceived by the more spiritual minded among them. It will serve also to
prove that the testimony of Friends against slavery is no novelty, but
is coeval with its rise as a distinct religious body. The measures
proposed by William Penn on this subject, are an honorable testimony to
the comprehensive benevolence of that truly great and magnanimous
legislator, yet they fell short of the exigencies of the case, and of
what Christian people required; consequently what good they directly
effected was local and temporary. Viewed as the germ of subsequent
anti-slavery enterprises of the last century, in Europe and America,
their interest and importance cannot be too highly estimated.

"I must observe, that soon after the colony (Pennsylvania) had
been planted, that is, in the year 1682, when William Penn was
first resident in it, some few Africans had been imported, but
that more had followed. At this time the traffic in slaves was
not branded with infamy, as at the present day. It was
considered, on the other hand, as favorable to both parties: to
the American planters, because they had but few laborers, in
comparison with the extent of their lands; and to the poor
Africans themselves, because they were looked upon as persons
redeemed out of superstition, idolatry, and heathenism. But
though the purchase and sale of them had been admitted with less
caution upon this principle, there were not wanting among the
Quakers of Pennsylvania those who, soon after the introduction
of them there, began to question the moral licitness of the
traffic. Accordingly, at the Yearly Meeting for Pennsylvania,
held in 1688, it had been resolved, on the suggestion of
emigrants from Crisheim, who had adopted the principles of
William Penn, that the buying, selling, and holding men in
slavery, was inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian
religion. In 1696, a similar resolution had been passed at the
Yearly Meeting of the same religious society for the same
province. In conse