e. He had
always considered them as persons of the like nature with
himself; as having the same desire of pleasure and the same
aversion from pain; as children of the same Father, and heirs of
the same promises. Knowing how naturally the human heart became
corrupted and hardened by the use of power, he was fearful lest,
in time, these friendless strangers should become an oppressed
people. Accordingly, as his predecessor, George Fox, when he
first visited the British West Indies, exhorted all those who
attended his meetings for worship there, to consider their
slaves as branches of their own families, for whose spiritual
instruction they would one day or other be required to give an
account, so William Penn had, on his first arrival in America,
inculcated the same notion. It lay, therefore, now upon his mind
to endeavor to bring into practice what had appeared to him to
be right in principle. One of them was to try to incorporate the
treatment of slaves, as a matter of Christian duty, into _the
discipline of his own religious society_; and the other, to
secure it among others in the colony of a different religious
description, _by a legislative act_. Both of these were
necessary. The former, however, he resolved to attempt first.
The Society itself had already afforded him a precedent, by its
resolutions in 1688 and in 1696, as before mentioned, and had
thereby done something material in the progress of the work. It
was only to get a minute passed upon their books to the intended
effect. Accordingly, at the very first Monthly Meeting of the
Society, which took place in Philadelphia in the present year,
he proposed the subject. He laid before them the concern which
had been so long upon his mind, relative to these unfortunate
people; he pressed upon them the duty of allowing them as
frequently as possible to attend their Meetings for worship, and
the benefit that would accrue to both, by the instruction of
them in the principles of the Christian religion. The result
was, that a Meeting was appointed more particularly for the
negroes, once every month; so that besides the common
opportunities they had of collecting religious knowledge, by
frequenting the places of worship, there was one day in the
month, in which, as far as the influence of the Monthly Meeting
extended, t