Like him, he left his
testimony against this wicked trade. When he was in the island of
Barbados, in the year 1671, he delivered himself to those who attended
his religious meetings in the following manner:--
"Consider with yourselves," says he, "if you were in the same condition
as the poor Africans are--who came strangers to you, and were sold to
you as slaves--I say, if this should be the condition of you or yours,
you would think it a hard measure; yea, and very great bondage and
cruelty. And, therefore, consider seriously of this; and do you for them
and to them, as you would willingly have them, or any others, do unto
you, were you in the like slavish condition, and bring them to know the
Lord Christ." And in his Journal, speaking of the advice which he gave
his friends at Barbados, he says, "I desired also that they would cause
their overseers to deal mildly and gently with their negroes, and not to
use cruelty towards them, as the manner of some had been, and that after
certain years of servitude they should make them free."
William Edmundson, who was a minister of the society, and, indeed, a
fellow-traveller with George Fox, had the boldness in the same island to
deliver his sentiments to the governor on the same subject.
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