In the year 1762, he printed, published, and distributed this treatise.

In 1767, he went on foot to the western shores of the same province on a religious visit.  After having crossed the Susquehanna, his old feelings returned to him; for coming amongst people living in outward ease and greatness, chiefly on the labour of slaves, his heart was much affected, and he waited with humble resignation to learn how he should further perform his duty to this injured people.  The travelling on foot, though it was agreeable to the state of his mind, he describes to have been wearisome to his body.  He felt himself weakly at times, in consequence of it, but yet continued to travel on.  At one of the quarterly meetings of the society, being in great sorrow and heaviness, and under deep exercise on account of the miseries of the poor Africans, he expressed himself freely to those present, who held them in bondage.  He expatiated on the tenderness and loving-kindness of the apostles, as manifested in labours, perils, and sufferings, towards the poor Gentiles, and contracted their treatment of the Gentiles with it, whom he described in the persons of their slaves; and was much satisfied with the result of his discourse.

From this time we collect little more, from his journal concerning him, than that, in 1772, he embarked for England on a religious visit.  After his arrival there, he travelled through many counties, preaching in different meetings of the society, till he came to the city of York.  But even here, though he was far removed from the sight of those whose interests he had so warmly espoused, he was not forgetful of their wretched condition.  At the quarterly meeting for that county, he brought their case before, those present in an affecting manner.  He exhorted these to befriend their cause.  He remarked that as they, the society, when under outward sufferings, had often found a concern to lay them before the legislature, and thereby, in the Lord’s time, had obtained relief; so he recommended this oppressed part of the creation to their notice, that they might, as, the way opened, represent their sufferings as individuals, if not as a religious society, to those in authority in this land.  This was the last opportunity that he had of interesting himself in behalf of this injured people for soon afterwards he was seized with the small-pox at the house of a friend in the city of York, where he died.

The next person belonging to the society of the Quakers, who laboured in behalf of the oppressed Africans, was Anthony Benezet.  He was born before, and he lived after, John Woolman; of course he was contemporary with him.  I place him after John Woolman, because he was not so much known as a labourer, till two or three years after the other had begin to move in the same cause.

Anthony Benezet was born at St. Quintin, in Picardy, of a respectable family, in the year 1713.  His father was one of the many Protestants who, in consequence of the persecutions which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantz, sought an asylum in foreign countries.  After a short stay in Holland, he settled, with his wife and children, in London, in 1715.