_Friendly Advice to the Planters_ in three parts. The first of these
was, _A brief Treatise of the principal Fruits and Herbs that grow in
Barbados, Jamaica, and other Plantations in the West Indies_. The second
was, _The Negroes' Complaint, or their hard Servitude, and the Cruelties
practised upon them by divers of their Masters professing Christianity_.
And the third was, _A Dialogue between an Ethiopian and a Christian, his
Master, in America_. In the last of these, Thomas Tryon, who was the
author, inveighs both against the commerce and the slavery of the
Africans, and in a striking manner examines each by the touchstone of
reason, humanity, justice, and religion.

In the year 1696, Southern brought forward his celebrated tragedy of
_Oronooko_, by means of which many became enlightened upon the subject,
and interested in it. For this tragedy was not a representation of
fictitious circumstances, but of such as had occurred in the colonies,
and as had been communicated in a publication by Mrs. Behn.

The person who seems to have noticed the subject next was Dr. Primatt.
In his _Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy, and on the Sin of Cruelty to
Brute Animals_, he takes occasion to advert to the subject of the
African Slave Trade. "It has pleased God," says he, "to cover some men
with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit
nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity
of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to
enslave and tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or
black, such he is by God's appointment, and, abstractly considered, is
neither a subject for pride, nor an object of contempt."

After Dr. Primatt, we come to Baron Montesquieu, "Slavery," says he, "is
not good in itself. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave;