By the minute,
which was made on this occasion, I apprehend that no one belonging to
the Society could furnish even materials for such voyages. "We renew our
exhortation, that Friends everywhere be especially careful to keep their
hands clear of giving encouragement in any shape to the Slave Trade, it
being evidently destructive of the natural rights of mankind, who are
all ransomed by one Saviour, and visited by one divine light, in order
to salvation; a traffic calculated to enrich and aggrandize some upon
the misery of others; in its nature abhorrent to every just and tender
sentiment, and contrary to the whole tenour of the Gospel."
Some pleasing intelligence having been sent on this subject, by the
Society in America to the Society in England, the yearly meeting of 1772
thought it their duty to notice it, and to keep their former resolutions
alive by the following minute:--"It appears that the practice of holding
negroes in oppressive and unnatural bondage hath been so successfully
discouraged by Friends in some of the colonies, as to be considerably
lessened. We cannot but approve of these salutary endeavours, and
earnestly intreat that they may be continued, that through the favour of
divine Providence a traffic, so unmerciful and unjust in its nature to a
part of our own species made, equally with ourselves, for immortality,
may come to be considered by all in its proper light, and be utterly
abolished as a reproach to the Christian name.
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