He wrote also a letter to the Countess of Huntingdon on the following
subject:--She had founded a college, at the recommendation of George
Whitfield, called the Orphan-house near Savannah, in Georgia, and had
endowed it. The object of this institution was to furnish scholastic
instruction to the poor, and to prepare some of them for the ministry.
George Whitfield, ever attentive to the cause of the poor Africans,
thought that this institution might have been useful to them also; but
soon after his death, they who succeeded him bought slaves, and these in
unusual numbers to extend the rice and indigo plantations belonging to
the college. The letter then in question was written by Anthony Benezet,
in order to lay before the Countess, as a religious woman, the misery
she was occasioning in Africa, by allowing the managers of her college
in Georgia to give encouragement to the Slave Trade. The Countess
replied, that such a measure should never have her countenance, and that
she would take care to prevent it.
On discovering that the Abbe Raynal had brought out his celebrated work,
in which he manifested a tender feeling in behalf of the injured
Africans, he entered into a correspondence with him, hoping to make him
yet more useful to their cause.
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