the vain mind in people, I was not easy to trade in; seldom did it; and whenever I did, I found it weaken me as a Christian.”  And from John Woolman I might mention the names of many, and, if delicacy did not forbid me, those of Quakers now living, who relinquished or regulated their callings, on an idea, that they could not consistently follow them at all, or that they could not follow them according to the usual manner of the world.  I knew the relation of a Quaker-distiller, who left off his business upon principle.  I was intimate with a Quaker-bookseller.  He did not give up his occupation, for this was unnecessary; but he was scrupulous about the selling of an improper book.  Another friend of mine, in the society, succeeded but a few years ago to a draper’s shop.  The furnishing of funerals had been a profitable part of the employ.  But he refused to be concerned in this branch of it, wholly owing to his scruples about it.  Another had been established as a silversmith for many years, and had traded in the ornamental part of the business, but he left it wholly, though advantageously situated, for the same reason, and betook himself to another trade.  I know other Quakers, who have held other occupations, not usually objectionable by the world, who have become uneasy about them, and have relinquished them in their turn.  These noble instances of the dereliction of gain, where it has interfered with principle, I feel it only justice to mention in this place.  It is an homage due to Quakerism; for genuine Quakerism will always produce such instances.  No true Quaker will remain in any occupation, which he believes it improper to pursue.  And I hope, if there are Quakers, who mix the sale of objectionable with that of the other articles of their trade, it is because they have entered into this mixed business, without their usual portion of thought, or that the occupation itself has never come as an improper occupation before their minds.

Upon the whole, it must be stated that it is wholly owing to the more than ordinary professions of the Quakers, as a religious body, that the charges in question have been exhibited against such individuals among them, as have been found in particular trades.  If other people had been found in the same callings, the same blemishes would not have been so apparent.  And if others had been found in the same, callings, and it had been observed of these, that they had made all the beautiful regulations which I have shown the Quakers to have done on the subject of trade, these blemishes would have been removed from the usual range of the human vision.  They would have been like the spots in the sun’s disk, which are hid from the observation of the human eye, because they are lost in the superior beauty of its blaze.  But when the Quakers have been looked at solely as Quakers, or as men of high religious profession, these blemishes have become conspicuous.  The moon, when it eclipses the sun, appears as a blemish in the body of that luminary.  So a public departure from publicly professed principles will always be noticed, because it will be an excrescence or blemish, too large and protuberant, to be overlooked in the moral character.