Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/29

Rh opponent of the bondage of men, Benjamin Lay. He was an Englishman by birth, brought up as a seaman, and after pursuing that occupation for several years, settled in Barbadoes; but the wretchedness and misery which he there witnessed, and the heart-rending scenes of cruelty and oppression, of which he was a daily observer, so affected his sensitive mind as to induce him, a few years afterwards, to quit the Island and emigrate to Pennsylvania. Here he likewise found the evil he so much shunned and abhorred, but in a far different and much mitigated form. He regarded slavery, however much disguised and qualified, still as a "bitter draught," and reprobated the practice with the same zeal and license of language which he had used in attacking West India bondage; and from his eccentricity of manner and too great warmth of expression, he is thought to have been less useful and influential than he otherwise might have become; yet he was a man of a strong and active mind, of great integrity and uprightness of heart, and one who no doubt acted from what he conceived to be the dictates of his conscience; hence we can most justly forgive his intemperate words and actions, and regard him as an early, honest, and active friend of oppressed humanity. In 1737 he published his treatise "on slave-keeping," a work evincing talents and considerable force of