Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/30

394 expression, though liable to the objections to which we have above adverted. This essay he distributed gratuitously, and was particularly anxious to have it introduced into schools, in order to awaken the sympathies of those who were about entering into active life. He also solicited and obtained interviews upon the subject of slavery with the governors of several of the States; and, in short, to the time of his death, which occurred in 1760, in his 80th year, he was constant and untiring in his labors.

In 1754 the Yearly Meeting of Pennsylvania printed and circulated a letter of advice to its members, reminding them of its often expressed and well known will upon the subject of buying slaves, and urging some cogent arguments to show the anti-christian nature of the traffic, and the awful responsibility that those masters were under who neglected to guard the morals of their slaves, and to imbue their minds with religion and virtue. It may be found at length in Clarkson's History of the Slave Trade. In 1755, finding that, in opposition to the reiterated advice of the body, some of its members continued to persist in buying negroes, the Yearly Meeting made a rule of discipline directing that such persons as adhered to the practice, after suitable admonition by their Monthly Meetings, should be disowned from the religious communion of the Society.

Having thus prevented the further increase of slaves by purchase, the Society was desirous of advancing still further towards a complete eradication of slavery from