The Quakers have thought it their duty, as a religious body, to make several regulations on this subject.

In the first place they have made it a rule, that no person, acknowledged to be in profession with them, shall have any concern in the slave-trade.

The Quakers began to consider this subject, as a Christian body, so early as in the beginning of the last century.  In the year 1727, they passed a public censure upon this trade.  In the year 1758, and afterwards in the year 1761, they warned and exhorted all in profession with them “to keep their hands clear of this unrighteous gain of oppression.”  In the yearly meeting of 1763, they renewed their exhortation in the following words:  “We renew our exhortation, that Friends every where be especially careful to keep their hands clear of giving encouragement in any shape to the slave-trade; it being evidently destructive of the natural rights of mankind, who are all ransomed by one Saviour, and visited by one divine light in order to salvation; a traffic calculated to enrich and aggrandize some upon the miseries of others; in its nature abhorrent to every just and tender sentiment, and contrary to the whole tenour of the Gospel.”

In the same manner, from the year 1763, they have publicly manifested a tender concern for the happiness of the injured Africans, and they have not only been vigilant to see that none of their own members were concerned in this impious traffic, but they have lent their assistance with other Christians in promoting its discontinuance.

They have forbidden also the trade of privateering in war.  The Quakers consider the capture of private vessels by private persons, as a robbery committed on the property of others, which no human authority can make reconcileable to the consciences of honest individuals.  And upon this motive they forbid it, as well as upon that of their known profession against war.

They forbid also the trade of the manufacturing of gun-powder, and of arms or weapons of war, such as swords, guns, pistols, bayonets, and the like, that they may stand clear of the charge of having made any instrument, the avowed use of which is the destruction of human life.

They have forbidden also all trade, that has for its object the defrauding of the king either of his customs or his excise.  They are not only not to smuggle themselves, but they are not to deal in such goods as they know, or such as they even suspect, to be smuggled; nor to buy any article of this description, even for their private use.  This prohibition is enjoined, because all Christians ought “to render to Caesar the things that are Caesars,” in all cases where their consciences do not suffer by doing it:  because those, who are accessory to smuggling, give encouragement to perjury and bloodshed, these being frequently the attendants of such unlawful practices; and because they do considerable injury to the honest trader.