Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/27

Rh The next laborer in behalf of the negroes whom we shall have occasion to notice, is Kalph Sandiford. He was descended from a respectable family in Barbadoes, and was educated as a member of the Episcopal Church, by a pious tutor, probably in Great Britain. On emigrating to Pennsylvania, he joined the Society of Friends, and soon began to direct his attention towards the condition of the black population. He rejected many advantageous propositions of pecuniary advancement, as they came from those who had acquired their property by the oppression of their slaves, and appears to have been very earnest and constant in his endeavors to prevail both on the members of his own religious society, as well as his friends generally, entirely to relinquish the practice of slaveholding. In 1729, he appeared as a public advocate of the blacks, by publishing a work, entitled "The Mystery of Iniquity, in a Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times," which he circulated at his own expense wherever he deemed it might be useful. We have never read the essay, but the author is represented to be a man of talents and unquestioned probity, and the work as every way worthy of him. In the words of Clarkson, "it was excellent as a composition. The language was correct. The style manly and energetic, and