George Fox was contemporary with Richard Baxter, being born not long after him, and dying much about the same time.  Like him, he left his testimony against this wicked trade.  When he was in the island of Barbadoes, 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 Barbadoes, he says, “I desired also, that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly and gently with their Negros, 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.  Having been brought before him and accused of making the Africans Christians, or, in other words, of making them rebel and destroy their owners, he replied, “that it was a good thing to bring them to the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus, and to believe in him who died for them and all men, and that this would keep them from rebelling, or cutting any person’s throat; but if they did rebel and cut their throats, as the governor insinuated they would, it would be their own doing, in keeping them in ignorance and under oppression, in giving them liberty to be common with women, like brutes, and, on the other hand, in starving them for want of meat and clothes convenient; thus giving them liberty in that which God restrained, and restraining them in that which was meat and clothing.”

I do not find any individual of this society moving in this cause for some time after the death of George Fox and William Edmundson.  The first circumstance of moment, which I discover, is a Resolution of the whole Society on the subject, at their yearly meeting held in London in the year 1727.  The resolution was contained in the following words:—­“It is the sense of this meeting, that the importing of Negros from their native country and relations by Friends, is not a commendable nor allowed practice, and is therefore censured by this meeting.”

In the year 1758 the Quakers thought it their duty, as a body to pass another Resolution upon this subject.  At this time the nature of the trade beginning to be better known we find them more animated upon it, as the following extract will show:—­