al liberty to his slaves. He paid all the
adults, on their discharge, the sum, which arbitrators, mutually chosen,
awarded them.]

[Footnote B: Previously to the year 1787, several of the states had made
the terms of manumission more easy.]

Having given to the reader the history of the third class of forerunners
and coadjutors, as it consisted of the Quakers in America, I am now to
continue it, as it consisted of an union of these with others on the same
continent in the year 1774, in behalf of the African race. To do this I
shall begin with the causes which led to the production of this great
event.

And in the first place, as example is more powerful than precept, we cannot
suppose that the Quakers could have shown these noble instances of
religious principle, without supposing also that individuals of other
religious denominations would be morally instructed by them. They who lived
in the neighbourhood where they took place, must have become acquainted
with the motives which led to them. Some of them must at least have praised
the action, though they might not themselves have been ripe to follow the
example. Nor is it at all improbable that these might be led, in the course
of the workings of their own minds, to a comparison between their own
conduct and that of the Quakers on this subject, in which they themselves
might appear to be less worthy in their own eyes. And as there is sometimes
a spirit of rivalship among the individuals of religious sects, where the
character of one is sounded forth as higher than that of another; this, if
excited by such a circumstance, would probably operate for good. It must
have been manifest also to many, after a lapse of time, that there was no
danger in what the Quakers had done, and that there was even sound policy
in the measure. But whatever were the several causes, certain it is, that
the example of the Quakers in leaving off all concern with the Slave-trade,
and in liberating their slaves (scattered as they were over various parts
of America) contributed to produce in many of a different religious
denomination from themselves, a more tender disposition than had been usual
towards the African race.

But a similar disposition towards these oppressed people was created in
others by means of other circumstances or causes. In the early part of the
eighteenth century, Judge Sewell of New England came forward as a zealous
advocate for them. He addressed a memorial to the legisla