ilies, we beseech you to consider them as souls
committed to your trust, whom the Lord will require at your
hand, and who, as well as you, are made partakers of the Spirit
of grace, and called to be heirs of salvation. And let it be
your constant care to watch over them for good, instructing them
in the fear of God and the knowledge of the Gospel of Christ,
that they may answer the end of their creation, and that God may
be glorified and honoured by them, as well as by us. And so
train them up, that if you should come to behold their unhappy
situation, in the same light that many worthy men who are at
rest have done, and many of your brethren now do, and should
think it your duty to set them free, they may be the more
capable of making proper use of their liberty.

Finally, brethren, we intreat you, in the bowels of Gospel-love,
seriously to weigh the Cause of detaining them in bondage. If it
be for your own private gain, or any other motive than their
good, it is much to be feared that the love of God, and the
influence of the Holy Spirit, are not the prevailing principles
in you, and that your hearts are not sufficiently redeemed from
the world, which, that you with ourselves may more and more come
to witness, through the cleansing virtue of the Holy Spirit of
Jesus Christ, is our earnest desire. With the salutation of our
love we are your friends and brethren:--

_"Signed, in behalf of the yearly meeting, by_

JOHN EVANS, ABRAHAM FARRINGDON,
JOHN SMITH, JOSEPH NOBLE,
THOMAS CARLETON, JAMES DANIEL,
WILLIAM TRIMBLE, JOSEPH GIBSON,
JOHN SCARBOROUGH, JOHN SHOTWELL,
JOSEPH HAMPTON, JOSEPH PARKER."

This truly Christian letter, which was written in the year 1754, was
designed, as we collect from the contents of it, to make the sentiments
of the society better known and attended to on the subject of the Slave
Trade. It contains, as we see, exhortations to all the members within
the yearly meeting of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, to desist from
purchasing and importing slaves, and, where they possessed them, to have
a tender consideration of their condition. But that the first part of
the subject of this exhortation might be enforced, the yearly meeting
for the same provinces came to a resolution in 1755, That if any of the
members belonging to it bought or imported slaves, the ove