222 FOTHERGILL AS PHILANTHROPIST CHAP. 



many others ; but half a century had to pass in England, 

 and a whole century in America, where the economic 

 conditions were far more difficult, before the national 

 conscience was roused to effectual action. 



In Fothergill's time the movement was only becoming 

 articulate. John Woolman was its prophet, a man weak, 

 humble and given to tears weeping like Hosea for the 

 sins of his nation yet so filled with love, so pure in 

 thought, so self-effacing, that he had power to move the 

 minds of his people. Under the influence of his tender 

 entreaties the Yearly Meeting of Friends at Philadelphia 

 in 1758 rose up and set their slaves at liberty. Woolman 

 came to England in 1772. The story of his landing, 

 alone and travel-stained from his steerage journey, to 

 be received with coolness by the disciplinarian elders of 

 London, may well be founded on fact. The pure gold 

 was hidden under a strange exterior. Posterity has come 

 to recognise him as the saint whose vision revealed the 

 .false and the true in the economy of human life. 



'Twas thine to bear a dying Saviour's cross, 

 Redeemed from earth, and earth's perplexing cares, 

 Redeemed from lawful and unlawful self. 



His contemporaries too often saw only a man of eccentric 

 ways and extreme scruples. Even Fothergill writes, a 

 few days after his arrival, of his singularities, but that 

 these were outweighed by his real worth. London 

 Yearly Meeting, which had often protested against the 

 slave trade, passed in Woolman's presence its first Minute 

 against the holding of negroes in bondage. He died at 

 York in the same year. 1 



Fothergill joined with his friends in the moral crusade 

 against slavery and all its works. His practical mind, 

 ever seeking ways to remedy the ills of men, projected a 

 scheme for settling a colony of freed negroes in Africa to 

 cultivate the sugar-cane, and he was ready, it is said, to 

 subscribe 10,000 towards the expense. He received a 



1 Journal of John Woolman, New Century Ed. p. 231 note. MS. Letter, 

 J. F. to Samuel Fothergill, 9.6.1772, Fds. Ref. Lib. M. Barnard, contem- 

 porary poem to Woolman's memory. 



