Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was
probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of
the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
of Urban and Leo the Tenth.

Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had
emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,
addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the
Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. That
meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment
in the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in
any more negroes." In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it
expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or
selling slaves." The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher
and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to
adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.

The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and
power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could
be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
caution, and not censure."