In the year 1737, he published a _Treatise on Slave-Keeping_.

This he gave away among his neighbours and others, but more particularly among the rising youth, many of whom he visited in their respective schools.

He applied also to several of the governors for interviews, with whom he held conferences on the subject.

Benjamin Lay was a man of strong understanding and of great integrity, but of warm and irritable feelings, and more particularly so when he was called forth on any occasion in which the oppressed Africans were concerned; for he had lived in the island of Barbados, and he had witnessed there scenes of cruelty towards them which had greatly disturbed his mind, and which unhinged it, as it were, whenever the subject of their sufferings was brought before him.

Hence, if others did not think precisely as he did, when he conversed with them on the subject, he was apt to go out of due bounds.