in their own houses.  This act was founded on the pretence, that the safety of the island might be endangered, if the slaves were to imbibe the religious principles of their masters.  Under this act Ralph Fretwell and Richard Sutton were fined in the different sums of eight hundred and of three hundred pounds, because each of them had suffered a meeting of the Quakers at his own house, at the first of which eighty negroes, and at the second of which thirty of them were present.  But this matter was carried still further; for in 1680, Sir Richard Dutton, then governor of the island, issued an order to the Deputy Provost Marshal and others, to prohibit all meetings of this society.  In the island of Nevis the same bad spirit manifested itself.  So early as in 1661, a law was made there prohibiting members of this society from coming on shore.  Negroes were put in irons for being present at their meetings, and they themselves were fined also.  At length, in 1677, another act was passed, laying a heavy penalty on every master of a vessel who should even bring a Quaker to the island.  In Antigua and Bermudas similar proceedings took place, so that the Quakers were in time expelled from this part of the world.  By these means a valuable body of men were lost to the community in these islands, whose example might have been highly useful; and the poor slave, who saw nothing but misery in his temporal prospects, was deprived of the only balm which could have soothed his sorrow—­the comfort of religion.

But to return to the continent of America.  Though the treatment which the Quakers adopted there towards those Africans who fell into their hands, was so highly commendable, it did not prevent individuals among them from becoming uneasy about holding them in slavery at all.  Some of these bore their private testimony against it from the beginning as a wrong practice, and in process of time brought it before the notice of their brethren as a religious body.  So early as in the year 1688, some emigrants from Krieshiem in Germany, who had adopted the principles of William Penn, and followed him into Pennsylvania, urged, in the yearly meeting of the society there, the inconsistency of buying, selling, and holding men in slavery, with the principles of the Christian religion.

In the year 1696, the yearly meeting for that province took up the subject as a public concern, and the result was, advice to the members of it to guard against future-importations of African slaves, and to be particularly attentive to the treatment of those who were then in their possession.

In the year 1711, the same yearly meeting resumed the important subject, and confirmed and renewed the advice which had been before given.

From this time it continued to keep the subject alive; but finding at length, that though individuals refused to purchase slaves, yet others continued the custom, and in greater numbers than it was apprehended would have been the case after the public declarations which had been made, it determined, in the year 1754, upon a fuller and more serious publication of its sentiments; and therefore it issued, in the same year, the following pertinent letter to all the members within its jurisdiction:—­