CHAPTER V.
Third class of forerunners and coadjutors, up to 1787, consists of the Quakers and others in America.—Yearly meeting for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys takes up the subject in 1696; and continue it till 1787.—Other five yearly meetings take similar measures.—Quakers, as individuals, also become labourers; William Burling and others.—Individuals of other religious denominations take up the cause also; Judge Sewell and others.—Union of the Quakers with others in a society for Pennsylvania, in 1774; James Pemberton; Dr. Rush.—Similar union of the Quakers with others for New York and other provinces.
The next class of the forerunners and coadjutors, up to the year 1787, will consist, first, of the Quakers in America; and then of others, as they were united to these for the same object.
It may be asked, How the Quakers living there should have become forerunners and coadjutors in the great work now under our consideration. I reply, first, that it was an object for many years with these to do away the Slave Trade as it was carried on in their own ports. But this trade was conducted in part, both before and after the independence of America, by our own countrymen. It was, secondly, an object with these to annihilate slavery in America; and this they have been instruments in accomplishing to a considerable extent. But any abolition of slavery within given boundaries must be a blow to the Slave Trade there. The American Quakers, lastly, living in a land where both the commerce and slavery existed, were in the way of obtaining a number of important facts relative to both, which made for their annihilation; and communicating many of these facts to those in England, who espoused the same cause, they became fellow-labourers with these in producing the event in question.
The Quakers in America, it must be owned, did most of them originally as other settlers there with respect to the purchase of slaves. They had lands without a sufficient number of labourers, and families without a sufficient number of servants, for their work. Africans were poured in to obviate these difficulties, and these were bought promiscuously by all. In these days, indeed, the purchase of them was deemed favourable to both parties, for there was little or no knowledge of the manner in which they had been procured as slaves. There was no charge of inconsistency on this account, as in later times. But though many of the Quakers engaged, without their usual consideration, in purchases of this kind, yet those constitutional principles, which belong to the society, occasioned the members of it in general to treat those whom they purchased with great tenderness, considering them, though of a different colour, as brethren, and as persons for whose spiritual welfare it became them to be concerned; so that slavery, except as to the power legally belonging to it, was in general little more than servitude in their hands.
This treatment, as it was thus mild on the continent of America where the members of this society were the owners of slaves, so it was equally mild in The West India Islands where they had a similar property. In the latter countries, however, where only a few of them lived, it began soon to be productive of serious consequences; for it was so different from that which the rest of the inhabitants considered to be proper, that the latter became alarmed at it. Hence in Barbados an act was passed in 1676, under Governor Atkins, which was entitled, An Act to prevent the people called Quakers from bringing their Negroes into their meetings for worship, though they held these in their own houses. This act was founded on the pretence, that the safety of the island might be endangered, if the slaves were to imbibe the religious principles of their masters. Under this act Ralph Fretwell and Richard Sutton were fined in the different sums of eight hundred and of three hundred pounds, because each of them had suffered a meeting of the Quakers at his own house, at the first of which eighty negroes, and at the second of which thirty of them were present. But this matter was carried still further; for in 1680, Sir Richard Dutton, then governor of the island, issued an order to the Deputy Provost Marshal and others, to prohibit all meetings of this society. In the island of Nevis the same bad spirit manifested itself. So early as in 1661, a law was made there prohibiting members of this society from coming on shore. Negroes were put in irons for being present at their meetings, and they themselves were fined also. At length, in 1677, another act was passed, laying a heavy penalty on every master of a vessel who should even bring a Quaker to the island. In Antigua and Bermudas similar proceedings took place, so that the Quakers were in time expelled from this part of the world. By these means a valuable body of men were lost to the community in these islands, whose example might have been highly useful; and the poor slave, who saw nothing but misery in his temporal prospects, was deprived of the only balm which could have soothed his sorrow—the comfort of religion.
But to return to the continent of America. Though the treatment which the Quakers adopted there towards those Africans who fell into their hands, was so highly commendable, it did not prevent individuals among them from becoming uneasy about holding them in slavery at all. Some of these bore their private testimony against it from the beginning as a wrong practice, and in process of time brought it before the notice of their brethren as a religious body. So early as in the year 1688, some emigrants from Krieshiem in Germany, who had adopted the principles of William Penn, and followed him into Pennsylvania, urged, in the yearly meeting of the society there, the inconsistency of buying, selling, and holding men in slavery, with the principles of the Christian religion.
In the year 1696, the yearly meeting for that province took up the subject as a public concern, and the result was, advice to the members of it to guard against future-importations of African slaves, and to be particularly attentive to the treatment of those who were then in their possession.
In the year 1711, the same yearly meeting resumed the important subject, and confirmed and renewed the advice which had been before given.
From this time it continued to keep the subject alive; but finding at length, that though individuals refused to purchase slaves, yet others continued the custom, and in greater numbers than it was apprehended would have been the case after the public declarations which had been made, it determined, in the year 1754, upon a fuller and more serious publication of its sentiments; and therefore it issued, in the same year, the following pertinent letter to all the members within its jurisdiction:—