224 HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY. [1715. 



monthly meeting, though it regarded the tenor of the letter as 

 " being nearly related to truth,'' found the questions involved 

 therein too weighty for its decision, and, accordingly, referred 

 the subject to the quartei'ly meeting, which, in like manner, and 

 for a like reason, submitted the matter to the consideration of 

 the yearly meeting. This body unquestionably represented the 

 Society not only within the limits of the Province, and three 

 lower counties, but also those settled in parts of New Jersey 

 and Maryland. The following minute made upon the occasion 

 should at least teach us to exercise an abundance of charity 

 towards the people of the South who still regard the institution 

 with so much favor: 



"A paper was presented by some German Friends concerning 

 the lawfulness and unlawfulness of buying and keeping negroes. 

 It was adjudged not to be proper for this meeting to give a 

 positive judgment in the case, it having so general a relation to 

 many other parts; and, therefore, at present, they forbear it."^ 



Such a decision, made by other men, under other circum- 

 stances, might be regarded as a convenient shift to get rid of a 

 disagreeable question they had not the moral courage to meet. 

 But such a suspicion cannot attach to these early Quakers. 

 Their faithfulness to what they regarded as the Truth, had been 

 tested, in very many of them, by the severest persecution that 

 the bigotry of the age dared to inflict. To them, it may be 

 remarked, the institution was presented in its mildest form ; 

 and doubtless many of them had witnessed a moral improve- 

 ment in the imported Africans distributed amongst them. They 

 were really not prepared to give " a positive judgment in the 

 case," but it ever after continued to be one upon which the 

 Society was deeply exercised, until the total abolition of slavery 

 was accomplished. 



In 1696, Friends are advised by the yearly meeting, " not to 

 encourage the bringing in any more negroes." It also gives 

 wholesome advice in respect to their moral training. In 1711, 

 the Quarterly Meeting of Chester declared to the yearly meet- 

 ing, " their dissatisfaction with Friends buying and encouraging 

 the bringing in of negroes." The advice of the yearly meeting 

 only goes to the discouragement of the slave trade. The Lon- 

 don Yearly Meeting was appealed to for advice, but none could 

 be had, except that the importing of slaves from their native 

 country by Friends, "is not a commendable or allowable prac- 

 tice." In 1714, a law was passed imposing a duty of ^20 on 

 each negro slave imported, on the ground "that the multiplying 

 of them may be of dangerous consequence." This act was 

 promptly disallowed by the home Government. 



1 Mitchener's Retrospect of Early Quakerism, 335. 



