But though many of the Quakers engaged, without their usual consideration, in purchases of this kind, yet those constitutional principles, which belong to the society, occasioned the members of it in general to treat those whom they purchased with great tenderness, considering them, though of a different colour, as brethren, and as persons for whose spiritual welfare it became them to be concerned; so that slavery, except as to the power legally belonging to it, was in general little more than servitude in their hands.
This treatment, as it was thus mild on the continent of America where the members of this society were the owners of slaves, so it was equally mild in The West India Islands where they had a similar property.

In the latter countries, however, where only a few of them lived, it began soon to be productive of serious consequences; for it was so different from that which the rest of the inhabitants considered to be proper, that the latter became alarmed at it.

Hence in Barbados an act was passed in 1676, under Governor Atkins, which was entitled, An Act to prevent the people called Quakers from bringing their Negroes into their meetings for worship, though they held these in their own houses.

This act was founded on the pretence, that the safety of the island might be endangered, if the slaves were to imbibe the religious principles of their masters.

Under this act Ralph Fretwell and Richard Sutton were fined in the different sums of eight hundred and of three hundred pounds, because each of them had suffered a meeting of the Quakers at his own house, at the first of which eighty negroes, and at the second of which thirty of them were present.