Known to persecution himself, Benezet always sympathized with the oppressed.

Accordingly, he connected himself with the Quakers, who at that time had before them the double task of fighting for religious equality and the amelioration of the condition of the Negroes.

Becoming interested in the welfare of the colored race, Benezet first attacked the slave trade, so exposing it in his speeches and writings that Clarkson entered the field as an earnest advocate of the suppression of the iniquitous traffic.

See Benezet, _Observations_, p.

30, and the _African Repository_, vol.iv., p.