Besides, if this good cause be really endangered by popular excitement, and the indiscretion of its imprudent advocates, the obligation of consistent Friends to be found at their posts, faithfully maintaining the testimony of truth on its behalf, is greatly increased; and it is under such circumstances that I think I have seen the peculiar advantage and protection to our young friends in England, of having their elder brethren with them, aiding them by their sympathy, as well as by their advice and counsel.  I am persuaded that those who are called to occupy the foremost ranks in society cannot be too careful not to impose a burden upon tender consciences, by discouraging, either directly or indirectly, a course of conduct which is sanctioned by the precepts and examples of our Divine Master, lest they alienate from us some of His disciples, and thereby greatly injure the society they are so laudably anxious to ‘keep unspotted from the world.’

“We are told, on the highest authority, that ‘by their fruits’ we are to judge of the laborers in the Christian vineyard; and, while I am fully aware of the greater difficulties in the way of emancipation here, as compared with Great Britain, I have been almost irresistibly led to contrast the difference in the results of the course pursued by Friends in the two countries.  In America, during the last twenty-five years, it is evident that slavery and the slave-trade have greatly increased; and even where the members of our society are the most numerous and influential, the prejudice against color is as strong as in any part of the world,[A] and Friends themselves, in many places, are by no means free from this prejudice.  In Great Britain, Friends, by society action, and by uniting with their fellow-countrymen, not only contributed, under Providence, in no small degree, to the passage of the act of 1834, for the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies; but, when it was found that the system of apprenticeship which this act introduced, was made an instrument of cruel oppression to the slaves, a renewal of similar labors for about twelve months, resulted in the complete emancipation of our colored brethren in those colonies.

[Footnote A:  “I should, I believe, do wrong to conceal the sorrow which I have felt that the scheme of African colonization, the great support of which, at the present time, appears to be hostility to anti-slavery efforts and an unchristian prejudice against color, still has the sympathy and the active aid of some members of our society.”]

“In closing this letter, I wish to address a few words to that numerous and valuable class of Friends, previously alluded to, with whom I deeply sympathize, who are only deterred from more active exertion by their reluctance to give dissatisfaction to those whom they respect.  The sorrow which I feel, under the consideration that, in parting with many of you, we never probably