importance, that our West-Indian settlements should be cultivated by African labourers.  But Quakers would never have allowed a slave-trade for such a purpose.  It has been thought again, and it is still thought, a desirable thing, that our property should be secured from the petty depredations of individuals.  But Quakers would never have consented to capital punishments for such an end.  In short, few public evils would have arisen among mankind, if statesmen had adopted the system, upon which the Quakers reason in political affairs, or if they had concurred with an ancient Grecian philosopher in condemning to detestation the memory of the man, who first made a distinction between expediency and moral right.

[36]That this trait of reasoning upon principle, regardless of the consequences, is likely to be a feature in the character of the Quakers, we are warranted in pronouncing, when we discover no less than three circumstances in the constitution of the Quakers, which may be causes in producing it.

[Footnote 36:  The Sierra Leone Company, which was founded for laudable purposes, ought have been filled by Quakers; but when they understood that there was to be a fort and depot of arms in the settlement, they declined becoming proprietors.]

This trait seems, in the first place, to be the direct and legitimate offspring of the trait explained in the last chapter.  For every time a Quaker is called upon to bear his testimony by suffering, whether in the case of a refusal to comply with the laws, or with the customs and fashions of the land, he is called upon to refer to his own conscience, against his own temporal interest, and against the opinion of the world.  The moment he gives up principle for policy in the course of his reasoning upon such occasions, then he does as many others do, that is, he submits to the less inconvenience, and then he ceases to be a Quaker.  But while he continues to bear his testimony, it is a proof that he makes expediency give way to what he imagines to be right.  The bearing therefore of testimony, where it is conscientiously done, is the parent, as it is also the bulwark and guardian of reasoning upon principle.  It throws out a memento whenever it is practised, and habituates the subject of it to reason in this manner.  But this trait is nourished and supported again by other causes, and first by the influence, which the peculiar customs of the Quakers must occasionally have upon their minds.  A Quaker cannot go out of doors, but he is reminded of his own singularity, or of his difference in a variety of respects from his fellow-citizens.  Now every custom, in which he is singular, whether it be that of dress or of language, or of address, or any other, is founded, in his own mind, on moral principle, and in direct opposition to popular opinion and applause.  He is therefore perpetually reminded, in almost all his daily habits, of the two opposite systems of reasoning, and is perpetually called upon as it were to refer to the principles, which originally made the difference between him and another citizen of the world.