distribute, or he sent letters by him, or he gave him some commission on the subject, so that he was the means of employing several persons at the same time, in various parts of America, in advancing the work he had undertaken.

In the same manner he availed himself of every other circumstance, as far as he could, to the same end. When he heard that Mr. Granville Sharp had obtained, in the year 1772, the verdict in the case of Somerset, the slave, he opened a correspondence with him, which he kept up, that there might be an union of action between them for the future, as far as it could be effected, and that they might each give encouragement to the other to proceed.

He wrote also a letter to the Countess of Huntingdon on the following subject: She had founded a college, at the recommendation of George Whitefield, called the Orphan-house, near Savannah, in Georgia, and had endowed it. The object of this institution was to furnish scholastic instruction to the poor, and to prepare some of them for the ministry. George Whitefield, ever attentive to the cause of the poor Africans, thought that this institution might have been useful to them also; but soon after his death, they who succeeded him bought slaves, and these in'unusual numbers, to extend the rice and indigo plantations belonging to the college. The letter then in question was written by Anthony Benezet, in order to lay before the countess, as a religious woman, the misery she was occasioning in Africa, by allowing the managers of her college in Georgia to give encouragement to the slave-trade. The countess replied that such a measure should never have her countenance, and that she would take care to prevent it.

On discovering that the Abbé Raynal had brought out his celebrated work, in which he manifested a tender feeling in behalf of the injured Africans, he entered into a correspondence with him, hoping to make him yet more useful to their cause.

Finding, also, in the year 1783, that the slave-trade, which had greatly declined during the war, was reviving, he addressed a pathetic letter to the queen, who, on hearing the high character of the writer of it from Benjamin West, received it with marks of peculiar condescension and attention. The following is a copy of it:

"TO CHARLOTTE, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN :

'Impressed with a sense of religious duty, and encouraged by the opinion generally entertained of thy benevolent disposition to succor the distressed, I take the liberty, very respectfully, to offer to thy perusal some tracts, which I believe faithfully describe the suffering condition of many hundred thousands of our fellow-creatures of the African race, great numbers of whom, rent from every tender connection in life, are annually taken from their native land, to endure, in the American islands and plantations, a most rigorous and cruel slavery; whereby many, very many of them, are brought to a melancholy ana untimely end.

"When it is considered that the inhabitants of Great Britain, who are themselves so eminently blessed in the enjoyment of religious and civil liberty, have long been, and yet are, very deeply concerned in this flagrant violation of the

common rights of mankind, and that even its national authority is exerted in support of the African slave-trade, there is much reason to apprehend that this has been, and, as long as the evil exists, will continue to be, an occasion of drawing down the Divine displeasure on the nation and its dependencies. May these considerations induce thee to interpose thy kind endeavors in behalf of this greatly injured people, whose abject situation gives them an additional claim to the pity and assistance of the generous mind, inasmuch as they are altogether deprived of the means of soliciting effectual relief for themselves; that so thou mayest not only be a blessed instrument in the hand of Him 'by whom kings reign and princes decree justice,' to avert the awful judgments by which the empire has already been so remarkably shaken, but that the blessings of thousands ready to perish may come upon thee, at a time when the superior advantages attendant on thy situation in this world will no longer be of any avail to thy consolation and support.

"To the tracts on this subject to which I have thus ventured to crave thy particular attention, I have added some which at different times I have believed it my duty to publish,* and which, I trust, will afford thee some satisfaction, their design being for the furtherance of that universal peace and good will amongst men, which the gospel was intended to introduce.

"I hope thou wilt kindly excuse the freedom used on this occasion by an ancient man, whose mind, for more than forty years past, has been much separated from the common intercourse of the world, and long painfully exercised in the consideration of the miseries under which so large a part of mankind, equally with us the objects of redeeming love, are suffering the most unjust and grievous oppressions, and who sincerely desires thy temporal and eternal felicity, and that of thy royal consort. ANTHONY BENEZET."

Anthony Benezet, besides the care he bestowed upon forwarding the cause of the oppressed Africans in different parts of the world, found time to promote the comforts and improve the condition of those in the state in which he lived. Apprehending that much advantage would arise both to them and the public, from instructing them in common learning, he zealously promoted the establishment of a school for that purpose. Much of the two last years of his life he devoted to a personal attendance on this school, being earnestly desirous that they who came to it might be better qualified for the enjoyment of that freedom to which great numbers of them had been then restored. To this he sacrificed the superior emoluments of his former school, and his bodily ease also, although the weakness of his constitution seemed to demand indulgence. By his last will he directed, that after the decease of his widow, his whole little fortune, the savings of the industry of fifty years, should, except a few very small legacies, be applied to the support of it. During his attendance upon it he had the happiness to find, and his situation enabled him to make the comparison, that Providence had been equally liberal to the Africans in genius and talents as to other people.

* These related to the principles of the religious society of the Quakers.

After a few days illness this excellent man died at Philadelphia in the spring of 1784. The interment of his remains was attended by several thousand of all ranks, professions, and parties, who united in deploring their loss. The mournful procession was closed by some hundreds of those poor Africans, who had been personally benefited by his labors, and whose behavior on the occasion showed the gratitude and affection they considered to be due to him as their own private benefactor, as well as the benefactor of their whole race.

Others in America beside the Quakers, early took the part of the oppressed Africans. In the first part of the eighteenth century, Judge Sewall, of New England, came forward as a zealous advocate for them. He addressed a memorial to the legislature, which he called The Selling of Joseph, and in which he pleaded their cause both as a lawyer and a Christian. This memorial produced an effect upon many, but particularly upon those of his own persuasion; and from this time the Presbyterians appear to have encouraged a sympathy in their favor.

In the year 1739, the celebrated George Whitefield became an instrument in turning the attention of many others to their condition, and of begetting in these a fellow-sympathy towards them. This laborious minister, having been deeply affected with what he had seen in the course of his travels in America, thought it his duty to address a letter from Georgia to the inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. This letter was printed in the year above mentioned, and is in part as follows:

"As I lately passed through your provinces on my way hither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling for the miseries of the poor negroes. Whether it be lawful for Christians to buy slaves, and thereby encourage the nations from whom they are bought to be at perpetual war with each other, I shall not take upon me to determine. Sure I am it is sinful, when they have bought them, to use them as bad as though they were brutes, nay, worse; and whatever particular exceptions there may be, (as I would charitably hope there are some,) I fear the generality of you, who own negroes, are liable to such a charge; for your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride. These, after they have done their work, are fed and taken proper care of; but many negroes, when wearied with labor on your plantations, have been obliged to grind their corn after their return home. Your dogs are caressed and fondled at your table; but your slaves, who are frequently called dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege. They are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their master's table; not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel task-masters, who, by their unrelenting scourges, have plowed their backs, and made long furrows, and at length brought them even unto death. When passing along I have viewed your plantations cleared and cultivated, many spacious houses built, and the owners of them faring sumptuously every day, my blood has frequently almost run cold within me, to consider how many of your slaves had neither convenient food to eat nor proper raiment to put on, notwithstanding most of the comforts you enjoy were solely owing to their indefatigable labors."

The letter, from which this is an extract, produced a desirable effect upon many of those who perused it, but particularly upon such as began to be seriously disposed in those times. And as George Whitefield continued a firm friend to the Africans, never losing an opportunity of serving them, he interested, in the course of his useful life, many thousands of his followers in their favor.

In the year 1772, a disposition favorable to the oppressed Africans became very generally manifest in some of the American Provinces. The house o. burgesses of Virginia even presented a petition to the king, beseeching his majesty to remove all those restraints on his governors of that colony, which inhibited their assent to such laws as might check that inhuman and impolitic commerce, the slave-trade: and it is remarkable that the refusal of the British government to permit the colonists to exclude slaves from among them by law, was enumerated afterwards among the public reasons for separating from the mother country.

In allusion to the fact just stated, Mr. Jefferson, in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, said: "He (the king of England) has waged civil war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him; captivating, and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain: determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce; and, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes, committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." (See the fac-simile of this draft in Jefferson's Correspondence.) But this passage was struck out when the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

But the friendly disposition was greatly increased in the year 1773, by the literary labors of Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia. In this year, at the instigation of Anthony Benezet, he took up the cause of the oppressed Africans in a little work, which he entitled An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements on the Slavery of the Negroes; and soon afterwards in another, which was a vindication of the first, in uswer to an acrimonious attack by a West Indian planter. These publications contained many new observations. They were written in a polished style; and while they exhibited the erudition and talents, they showed the liberality and benevolence of the author. Having had considerable circulation, they spread conviction among many, and promoted the cause for which they had been so laudably undertaken.

In the next year, or in the year 1774,* the increased good-will towards the Africans became so apparent, but more particularly in Pennsylvania, where the Quakers were more numerous than in any other state, that they, who considered themselves more immediately as the friends of these injured people, thought it right to avail themselves of it: and accordingly James Pemberton, one of the most conspicuous of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, and Dr. Rush, one of the most conspicuous of those belonging to the various other religious communities in that province, undertook, in conjunction with others, the important task of bringing those into society who were friendly to this cause. In this undertaking they succeeded. This society, which was confined to Pennsylvania, was the first ever formed in America, in which there was a union of persons of different religious denominations in behalf of the African race. But this society had scarcely bugun to act, when the war broke out between England and America, which had the effect of checking its operations. This was considered as a severe blow upon it. But as those things which appear most to our disadvantage turn out often the most to our benefit, so the war, by giving birth to the independence of America, was ultimately favorable to its progress. For as this contest had produced during its continuance, so it left, when it was over, a general enthusiasm for liberty. Many talked of little else but of the freedom they had gained. These were naturally led to the consideration of those among them who were groaning in bondage. They began to feel for their hard case. They began to think that they should not deserve the new blessing which they had acquired, if they denied it to others. Thus the discussions which originated in this contest, became the occasion of turning the attention of many, who might not otherwise have thought of it, toward the miserable condition of the slaves.

Nor were writers wanting, who, influenced by considerations on the war and the independence resulting from it, made their works subservient to the same benevolent end. A work entitled, A Serious Address to the Rulers of America on the Inconsistency of their Conduct respecting Slavery, forming a Contrast between the Encroachments of England on American Liberty and American Injustice in tolerating Slavery, which appeared in 1783, was particularly instrumental in producing this effect. This excited a more than usual attention to the case of these oppressed people, and where most of all it could be useful. For the author compared in two opposite columns the animated speeches and resolutions of the members of congress in behalf of their own liberty with their conduct in continuing slavery to others. Hence congress began to feel the inconsistency of the practice; and so far had the sense of this inconsistency spread, that when the delegates met from each state to consider of a federal union, there was a desire that the abolition of the slave-trade should be one of the articles of it. This was, however, op

* In this year, Elhanan Winchester, a supporter of the doctrine of universal redemption, turned the attention of many of his hearers to this subject, both by private conference and by preaching expressly upon it.