or on the same subject. Having been
brought before him and accused of making the Africans Christians, or, in
other words, of making them rebel and destroy their owners, he replied,
"that it was a good thing to bring them to the knowledge of God and Christ
Jesus, and to believe in him who died for them and all men, and that this
would keep them from rebelling, or cutting any person's throat; but if they
did rebel and cut their throats, as the governor insinuated they would, it
would be their own doing, in keeping them in ignorance and under
oppression, in giving them liberty to be common with women, like brutes,
and, on the other hand, in starving them for want of meat and clothes
convenient; thus giving them liberty in that which God restrained, and
restraining them in that which was meat and clothing."

I do not find any individual of this society moving in this cause for some
time after the death of George Fox and William Edmundson. The first
circumstance of moment, which I discover, is a Resolution of the whole
Society on the subject, at their yearly meeting held in London in the year
1727. The resolution was contained in the following words:--"It is the
sense of this meeting, that the importing of Negros from their native
country and relations by Friends, is not a commendable nor allowed
practice, and is therefore censured by this meeting."

In the year 1758 the Quakers thought it their duty, as a body to pass
another Resolution upon this subject. At this time the nature of the trade
beginning to be better known we find them more animated upon it, as the
following extract will show:--

"We fervently warn all in profession with us, that they carefully avoid
being any way concerned in reaping the unrighteous profits arising from the
iniquitous practice of dealing in Negro or other slaves; whereby, in the
original purchase, one man selleth another, as he doth the beasts that
perish, without any better pretension to a property in him, than that of
superior force; in direct violation of the Gospel rule, which teacheth all
to do as they would be done by, and to do good to all; being the reverse of
that covetous disposition, which furnisheth encouragement to those poor
ignorant people to perpetuate their savage wars, in order to supply the
demands of this most unnatural traffic, by which great numbers of mankind,
free by nature, are subject to inextricable bondage; and which hath often
been observed to fill their possesso