“Under the countenance of the laws of this country many thousands of these our fellow-creatures, entitled to the natural rights of mankind, are held as personal property in cruel bondage; and your petitioners being informed that a Bill for the Regulation of the African Trade is now before the House, containing a clause which restrains the officers of the African Company from exporting Negros, your petitioners, deeply affected with a consideration of the rapine, oppression, and bloodshed, attending this traffic, humbly request that this restriction may be extended to all persons whomsoever, or that the House would grant such other relief in the premises as in its wisdom may seem meet.”

This petition was presented by Sir Cecil Wray, who, on introducing it, spoke very respectfully of the Society.  He declared his hearty approbation of their application, and said he hoped he should see the day when not a slave would remain within the dominions of this realm.  Lord North seconded the motion, saying he could have no objection to the petition, and that its object ought to recommend it to every humane breast; that it did credit to the most benevolent society in the world; but that, the session being so far advanced, the subject could not then be taken into consideration; and he regretted that the Slave-trade, against which the petition was so justly directed, was in a commercial view become necessary to almost every nation of Europe.  The petition was then brought up and read, after which it was ordered to lie on the table.  This was the first petition (being two years earlier than that from the inhabitants of Bridgewater), which was ever presented to parliament for the abolition of the Slave-trade.

But the Society did not stop here; for having at the yearly meeting of 1783 particularly recommended the cause to a standing commitee appointed to act at intervals, called the Meeting for Sufferings, the latter in this same year resolved upon an address to the public, entitled, The Case of our Fellow-creatures, the oppressed Africans, respectfully recommended to the serious Consideration of the Legislature of Great Britain, by the People called Quakers:  in which they endeavoured in the most pathetic manner to make the reader acquainted with the cruel nature of this trade; and they ordered two thousand copies of it to be printed.

In the year 1784 they began the distribution of this case.  The first copy was sent to the King through Lord Carmarthen, and the second and the third, through proper officers, to the Queen and the Prince of Wales.  Others were sent by a deputation of two members of the society to Mr. Pitt, as prime-minister; to the Lord Chancellor Thurlow; to Lord Gower, as president of the council; to Lords Carmarthen and Sidney, as secretaries of state; to Lord Chief Justice Mansfield; to Lord Howe, as first lord of the Admiralty; and to C.F.  Cornwall, Esq. as speaker of the House of Commons.  Copies were sent also to every member of both Houses of Parliament.