honor done me. As for any services I can do, they are indeed but
small; for I find, that, far from possessing, in the decline of
life, your vigor of body and mind, every kind of business is
becoming more and more an incumbrance to me. At the same time,
the calls of business increase upon me, as you will learn in some
measure from the Report at the end of the Discourse, which you
will receive with this letter.

A similar institution to yours, for abolishing Negro slavery, is
just formed in London, and I have been desired to make one of the
acting committee, but I have begged to be excused. I have sent
you some of their papers. I need not say how earnestly I wish
success to such institutions. Something, perhaps, will be done
with this view by the convention of delegates. This convention,
consisting of many of the first men, in respect of wisdom and
influence, in the United States, must be a most august and
venerable assembly. May God guide their deliberations. The
happiness of the world depends, in some degree, on the result. I
am waiting with patience for an account of it.[6]

At the instigation of Franklin, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting
the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully
held in Bondage[7] published this address:

It is with peculiar satisfaction we assure the friends of
humanity, that, in prosecuting the design of our association, our
endeavours have proved successful, far beyond our most sanguine
expectations.

Encouraged by this success, and by the daily progress of that
luminous and benign spirit of liberty, which is diffusing itself
throughout the world, and humbly hoping for the continuance of
the divine blessing on our labors, we have ventured to make an
important addition to our original plan, and do therefore
earnestly solicit the support and assistance of all who can feel
the tender emotions of sympathy and compassion or relish the
exalted pleasure of beneficence.

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its
very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may
sometimes open a source of serious evils.

The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute animal, too
frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human
species. The galling chains, that bi