At this meeting also all the members of it were cautioned and advised against acting as executors or administrators to estates, where slaves were bequeathed, or likely to be detained in bondage.
[Footnote A: This alludes to the term of servitude for white persons in these provinces.] In the year 1776, the same yearly meeting carried the matter still further.

It was enacted, That the owners of slaves, who refused to execute proper instruments for giving them their freedom, were to be disowned likewise.
In 1778 it was enacted by the same meeting, that the children of those who had been set free by members, should be tenderly advised, and have a suitable education given them.
It is not necessary to proceed further on this subject.

It may be sufficient to say, that from this time the minutes of the yearly meeting for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys exhibit proofs of an almost incessant attention, year after year[B], to the means not only of wiping away the stain of slavery from their religious community, but of promoting the happiness of those restored to freedom, and of their posterity also; and as the yearly meeting of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys set this bright example, so those of New England, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and of the Carolinas and Georgia, in process of time followed it.
[Footnote B: Thus in 1778-1782, 1784-1786.

The members also of this meeting petitioned their own legislature on this subject, both in 1783 and in 1786.] But, whilst the Quakers were making these exertions at their different yearly meetings in America, as a religious body, to get rid both of the commerce and slavery of their fellow-creatures, others, in the same profession; were acting as individuals, (that is, on their own grounds, and independently of any influence from their religious communion,) in the same cause, whose labours it will now be proper, in a separate narrative, to detail.
The first person of this description in the Society, was William Burling, of Long Island.

He had conceived an abhorrence of slavery from early youth.