CHAPTER IV.
-- Second class of forerunners and coadjutors, up to May 1787, consists of the Quakers in England .-- Of George Fox and others .-- Of the body of the Quakers assembled at the yearly meeting in 1727; and at various other times .-- Quakers, as a body, petition Parliament; and circulate books on the subject .-- Individuals among them become labourers and associate in behalf of the Africans; Dilwyn, Harrison, and others .-- This the first association ever formed in England for the purpose.
The second class of the forerunners and coadjutors in this great cause, up to May 1787, will consist of the Quakers in England.
The first of this class was George Fox, the venerable founder of this benevolent society.
George Fox was contemporary with Richard Baxter, being born not long after him, and dying much about the same time.

Like him, he left his testimony against this wicked trade.

When he was in the island of Barbados, in the year 1671, he delivered himself to those who attended his religious meetings in the following manner:-- "Consider with yourselves," says he, "if you were in the same condition as the poor Africans are--who came strangers to you, and were sold to you as slaves--I say, if this should be the condition of you or yours, you would think it a hard measure; yea, and very great bondage and cruelty.

And, therefore, consider seriously of this; and do you for them and to them, as you would willingly have them, or any others, do unto you, were you in the like slavish condition, and bring them to know the Lord Christ." And in his Journal, speaking of the advice which 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." William Edmundson, who was a minister of the society, and, indeed, a fellow-traveller with George Fox, had the boldness in the same island to deliver his sentiments to the governor on the same subject.

Having been brought before him and accused of making the Africans Christians, or, in other words, of making them rebel and destroy their owners, he replied, "That it was a good thing to bring them to the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus, and to believe in him who died for them and all men, and that this would keep them from rebelling, or cutting any person's throat; but if they did rebel and cut their throats, as the governor insinuated they would, it would be their own doing, in keeping them in ignorance and under oppression, in giving them liberty to be common with women like brutes, and, on the other hand, in starving them for want of meat and clothes convenient; thus, giving them liberty in that which God restrained, and restraining them in that which was meat and clothing." I do not find any individual of this society moving in this cause, for some time after the death of George Fox and William Edmundson.