hose masters in foreign plantations, who have Negros and other slaves. In
this he protests loudly against this trade. He says expressly that they,
who go out as pirates, and take away poor Africans, or people of another
land, who never forfeited life or liberty, and make them slaves and sell
them, are the worst of robbers, and ought to be considered as the common
enemies of mankind; and that they, who buy them, and use them as mere
beasts for their own convenience, regardless of their spiritual welfare,
are fitter to be called demons than Christians. He then proposes several
queries, which he answers in a clear and forcible manner, showing the great
inconsistency of this traffic, and the necessity of treating those then in
bondage with tenderness and a due regard to their spiritual concerns.

The Directory of Baxter was succeeded by a publication called "Friendly
Advice to the Planters: in three parts." The first of these was, "A brief
Treatise of the principal Fruits and Herbs that grow in Barbadoes, Jamaica,
and other Plantations in the West Indies." The second was, "The Negros
Complaint, or their hard Servitude, and the Cruelties practised upon them
by divers of their Masters professing Christianity." And the third was, "A
Dialogue between an Ethiopian and a Christian, his Master, in America." In
the last of these, Thomas Tryon, who was the author, inveighs both against
the commerce and the slavery of the Africans, and in a striking manner
examines each by the touchstone of reason, humanity, justice, and religion.

In the year 1696, Southern brought forward his celebrated tragedy of
Oronooko, by means of which many became enlightened upon the subject, and
interested in it. For this tragedy was not a representation of fictitious
circumstances, but of such as had occurred in the colonies, and as had been
communicated in a publication by Mrs. Behn.

The person, who seems to have noticed the subject next was Dr. Primatt. In
his "Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy, and on the Sin of Cruelty to
Brute-animals," he takes occasion to advert to the subject of the African
Slave-trade. "It has pleased God," says he, "to cover some men with white
skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in
complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and
prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to enslave and
tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or black, such he
i