Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/32

[ 30 ] as slaves. I say, if this should be the condition of you or yours, you would think it hard measure. Yea, and very great bondage and cruelty. And, therefore, consider seriously of this, and do you for and to them, as you would willingly have them, or any other, to do unto you, were you in the like slavish condition; and bring them to know the Lord Christ.'

And in his journal, page 431, speaking of the advice he gave his friends at Barbados, he says, "I desired also, that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly and gently with their Negroes, and not to use cruelty towards them, as the manner of some had been, and that after certain years of servitude they should make them free.'"

In a book printed in Liverpool, called The Liverpool Memorandum-book, which contains, among other things, an account of the trade of that port, there is an exact list of the vessels employed in the Guinea trade, and of the number of Slaves imported in each vessel, by which it appears, that in the year 1753, the number imported to America, by vessels belonging to that port, amounted to upwards of thirty thousand; and from the number of vessels employed by the African Company in London and Bristol, we may, with some degree of certainty, conclude, there is, at least, One Hundred Thousand Negoes purchased and brought on board our ships yearly from the coast of Africa, on their account. This is confirmed in Anderson's History of Trade and Commerce, printed the year before last, where it is said, at page 68 of the Appendix,  'That England supplies her American Colonies with Negro-slaves, amounting in number to above One Hundred Thousand every year.'  When the vessels are full freighted with slaves, they set out for our