“We do not cease to rejoice with reverent thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the termination of this system of iniquity in the British Colonies.  It was an act of justice on the part of our Legislature, and it has removed an enormous load of guilt from our beloved country; but in our rejoicing, we cannot, nor would we wish, to forget the hundreds of thousands of our brethren and sisters on the continent of America, and elsewhere, still detained in this abject condition, and liable to all the misery and oppression which it entails upon its victims.

“We have a strong conviction of the guilt and sinfulness of slavery, and its pernicious effects upon both the oppressed and the oppressor.  That man should claim a right of property in the person of his fellow—­that man should buy and sell his brother—­that civil governments in their legislative enactments, should so far forget that ’God who giveth to all, life, and breath, and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth,’ as to treat those who differ from them in the color of their skin, or any other external peculiarity, as beasts that perish, as chattels and articles of merchandise,—­is in such direct violation of the whole moral law, and of the righteousness of the New Testament, and that in a day in which the principles of civil and religious liberty are so fully acknowledged in many of the nations of Christendom, may well excite both indignation and sorrow.  And we cannot but regard it as such proof of hardness of heart, and perverted understanding, that we think it can be attributed to nothing short of the deceivableness of Satan working upon the fallen nature of man.

“It was, dear friends, in the gradual unfolding of that light in which the things that are reproved are made manifest, that your forefathers and ours, were brought to see the criminality of slavery.  Thus enlightened, they could find no peace with God, until they had put away this evil of their doings from before his eyes—­until by a conscientious discharge of their individual religious duty, they had restored those whom they held in bondage, to the full enjoyment of unqualified freedom.  Under the influence of Divine wisdom, and by this faithfulness on the part of upright Friends, our religious society were brought to a united and settled judgment as a body, that personal slavery, both in its origin and its results, was so great an evil, that it could be tolerated by no mitigation of its hardship; and they felt the demands of equity to be so urgent upon them, that they were concerned to enjoin it upon Friends every where, by a ready compliance with such reasonable duty, to cease to do evil, by immediately releasing those they held as slaves.  Their own hands being cleansed from this pollution, they felt it to be laid