And some time after this, a young man of our Society spoke to me to write a conveyance of a slave to him, he having lately taken a Negro into his house.  I told him I was not easy to write it; for though many of our meeting, and in other places, kept slaves, I still believed the practice was not right, and desired to be excused from the writing.  I spoke to him in good-will; and he told me that keeping slaves was not altogether agreeable to his mind, but that the slave being a gift to his wife he had accepted of her.”

We may easily conceive that a person so scrupulous and tender on this subject (as indeed John Woolman was on all others) was in the way of becoming in time more eminently serviceable to his oppressed fellow-creatures.  We have seen already the good seed sown in his heart, and it seems to have wanted only providential seasons and occurrences to be brought into productive fruit.  Accordingly we find that a journey, which he took as a minister of the gospel in 1746, through the provinces of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, which were then more noted than others for the number of slaves in them, contributed to prepare him as an instrument for the advancement of this great cause.  The following are his own observations upon this journey.  “Two things were remarkable to me in this journey; First, in regard to my entertainment.  When I ate, drank, and lodged free-cost, with people who lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy; and, as my mind was inward to the Lord, I found, from place to place, this uneasiness return upon me at times through the whole visit.  Where the masters bore a good share of the burthen, and lived frugally, so that their servants were well provided for, and their labour moderate, I felt more easy.  But where they lived in a costly way, and laid heavy burthens on their slaves, my exercise was often great, and I frequently had conversations with them in private concerning it.  Secondly, This trade of importing slaves from their native country being much encouraged among them, and the White people and their children so generally living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my serious thoughts:  and I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared to me as a gloom over the land.”

From the year 1747 to the year 1753, he seems to have been occupied chiefly as a minister of religion, but in the latter year he published a work upon Slave-keeping; and in the same year, while travelling within the compass of his own monthly meeting, a circumstance happened, which kept alive his attention to the same subject.  “About this time,” says he, “a person at some distance lying sick, his brother came to me to write his will.  I knew he had slaves, and, asking his brother, was told, he intended to leave them as slaves to his children.  As writing was a profitable employ, and as offending sober people