so far advanced, the subject, could not then be taken into consideration; and he regretted that the Slave Trade, against which the petition was so justly directed, was in a commercial view become necessary to almost every nation of Europe.  The petition was then brought up and read, after which it was ordered to lie on the table.  This was the first petition (being two years earlier than that from the inhabitants of Bridgewater), which was ever presented to parliament for the abolition of the Slave Trade.

But the society did not stop here; for having at the yearly meeting of 1783 particularly recommended the cause to a standing committee, appointed to act at intervals, called the Meeting for Sufferings, the latter in this same year resolved upon an address to the public, entitled, The Case of our Fellow-creatures, the oppressed Africans, respectfully recommended to the serious Consideration of the Legislature of Great Britain, by the People called Quakers:  in which they endeavoured, in the most pathetic manner, to make the reader acquainted with the cruel nature of this trade; and they ordered 2000 copies of it to be printed.

In the year 1784, they began the distribution of this case.  The first copy was sent to the king through Lord Carmarthen, and the second and the third, through proper officers, to the queen and the Prince of Wales.  Others were sent by a deputation of two members of the society to Mr. Pitt, as prime-minister; to the Lord Chancellor Thurlow; to Lord Gower, as president of the council; to Lords Carmarthen and Sidney, as secretaries of state; to Lord Chief-Justice Mansfield; to Lord Howe, as first lord of the Admiralty; and to C.F.  Cornwall, Esq., as speaker of the House of Commons.  Copies were sent also to every member of both houses of parliament.

The society, in the same year, anxious that the conduct of its members should be consistent with its public profession on this great subject, recommended it to the quarterly and monthly meetings to inquire through their respective districts, whether any, bearing its name, were in any way concerned in the traffic, and to deal with such, and to report the success of their labours in the ensuing year.  Orders were also given for the reprinting and circulation of 10,000 other copies of The Case.

In the year 1785, the society interested itself again in a similar manner.  For the Meeting for Sufferings, as representing it, recommended to the quarterly meetings to distribute a work, written by Anthony Benezet, in America, called A Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies, in a short Representation of the calamitous State of the enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions. This book was accordingly forwarded to them for this purpose.  On receiving it, they sent it among several public bodies, the regular and dissenting clergy, justices of the peace, and particularly among the great Schools of the kingdom, that the rising youth might acquire a knowledge, and at the same time a detestation, of this cruel traffic.  In this latter base, a deputation of the society waited, upon the masters, to know if they would allow their scholars to receive it.  The schools of Westminster, the Charter-house, St. Paul, Merchant-Taylors, Eton, Winchester, and Harrow, were among those visited.  Several academies also were visited for this purpose.