Of those, who compose the first class, defined as it has now been, I cannot name any individual who took a part in this cause till between the years 1670 and 1680; for in the year 1640, and for a few years afterwards, the nature of the trade and of the slavery was but little known, except to a few individuals, who were concerned in them; and it is obvious that these would neither endanger their own interest nor proclaim their own guilt by exposing it.  The first, whom I shall mention is Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the established church.  This pious divine wrote a treatise upon the subject, which he dedicated to the then archbishop of Canterbury.  He gave it to the world, at the time mentioned, under the title of “The Negroes’ and Indians’ Advocate.” In this treatise he lays open the situation of these oppressed people, of whose sufferings he had been an eye-witness in the island of Barbados.  He calls forth the pity of the reader in an affecting manner, and exposes with a nervous eloquence the brutal sentiments and conduct of their oppressors.  This seems to have been the first work undertaken in England expressly in favour of the cause.

The next person, whom I shall mention, is Richard Baxter, the celebrated divine among the nonconformists.  In his Christian Directory, published about the same time as The Negroes’ and Indians’ Advocate, he gives advice to those masters in foreign plantations, who have negroes and other slaves.  In this he protests loudly against this trade.  He says expressly that they, who go out as pirates, and take away poor Africans, or people of another land, who never forfeited life or liberty, and make them slaves and sell them, are the worst of robbers, and ought to be considered as the common enemies of mankind; and that they who buy them, and use them as mere beasts for their own convenience, regardless of their spiritual welfare, are fitter to be called demons than christians.  He then proposes several queries, which he answers in a clear and forcible manner, showing the great inconsistency of this traffic, and the necessity of treating those then in bondage with tenderness and a due regard to their spiritual concerns.

The Directory of Baxter was succeeded by a publication called Friendly Advice to the Planters in three parts.  The first of these was, A brief Treatise of the principal Fruits and Herbs that grow in Barbados, Jamaica, and other Plantations in the West Indies.  The second was, The Negroes’ Complaint, or their hard Servitude, and the Cruelties practised upon them by divers of their Masters professing Christianity.  And the third was, A Dialogue between an Ethiopian and a Christian, his Master, in America.  In the last of these, Thomas Tryon, who was the author, inveighs both against the commerce and the slavery of the Africans, and in a striking manner examines each by the touchstone of reason, humanity, justice, and religion.