under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
many among us are enjoying."

In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still
held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,
the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those
offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should
proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise
number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost
all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of
the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting
the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of
truth.

So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three quarters of a
century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated
intervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimony
against slavery," has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a
slave is concerned. Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there
is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,
urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the
way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,
entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied
with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.

The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be
traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
this country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of the
noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
sentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
Mifflin, a friend and d