Part 7 (2/2)
In 1767, he went on foot to the western sh.o.r.es of the same province on a religious visit. After having crossed the Susquehanna, his old feelings returned to him; for coming amongst people living in outward ease and greatness, chiefly on the labour of slaves, his heart was much affected, and he waited with humble resignation to learn how he should further perform his duty to this injured people. The travelling on foot, though it was agreeable to the state of his mind, he describes to have been wearisome to his body. He felt himself weakly at times, in consequence of it, but yet continued to travel on. At one of the quarterly meetings of the society, being in great sorrow and heaviness, and under deep exercise on account of the miseries of the poor Africans, he expressed himself freely to those present, who held them in bondage. He expatiated on the tenderness and loving-kindness of the apostles, as manifested in labours, perils, and sufferings, towards the poor Gentiles, and contracted their treatment of the Gentiles with it, whom he described in the persons of their slaves; and was much satisfied with the result of his discourse.
From this time we collect little more, from his journal concerning him, than that, in 1772, he embarked for England on a religious visit. After his arrival there, he travelled through many counties, preaching in different meetings of the society, till he came to the city of York. But even here, though he was far removed from the sight of those whose interests he had so warmly espoused, he was not forgetful of their wretched condition. At the quarterly meeting for that county, he brought their case before, those present in an affecting manner. He exhorted these to befriend their cause. He remarked that as they, the society, when under outward sufferings, had often found a concern to lay them before the legislature, and thereby, in the Lord's time, had obtained relief; so he recommended this oppressed part of the creation to their notice, that they might, as, the way opened, represent their sufferings as individuals, if not as a religious society, to those in authority in this land. This was the last opportunity that he had of interesting himself in behalf of this injured people for soon afterwards he was seized with the small-pox at the house of a friend in the city of York, where he died.
The next person belonging to the society of the Quakers, who laboured in behalf of the oppressed Africans, was Anthony Benezet. He was born before, and he lived after, John Woolman; of course he was contemporary with him. I place him after John Woolman, because he was not so much known as a labourer, till two or three years after the other had begin to move in the same cause.
Anthony Benezet was born at St. Quintin, in Picardy, of a respectable family, in the year 1713. His father was one of the many Protestants who, in consequence of the persecutions which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantz, sought an asylum in foreign countries. After a short stay in Holland, he settled, with his wife and children, in London, in 1715.
Anthony Benezet having received from his father a liberal education, served an apprentices.h.i.+p in an eminent mercantile house in London. In 1731, however, he removed with his family to Philadelphia, where he joined in profession with the Quakers. His three brothers then engaged in trade, and made considerable pecuniary acquisitions in it. He himself might have partaken both of their concerns and of their prosperity; but he did not feel himself at liberty to embark in their undertakings. He considered the acc.u.mulation of wealth as of no importance, when compared with the enjoyment of doing good; and he chose the humble situation of a schoolmaster, as according best with this notion, believing, that by endeavouring to train up youth in knowledge and virtue, he should become more extensively useful than in any other way to his fellow-creatures.
He had not been long in his new situation, before he manifested such an uprightness of conduct, such a courtesy of manners, such a purity of intention, and such a spirit of benevolence, that he attracted the notice, and gained the good opinion, of the inhabitants among whom he lived. He had ready access to them, in consequence, upon all occasions; and, if there were any whom he failed to influence at any of these times, he never went away without the possession of their respect.
In the year 1756, when a considerable number of French families were removed from Acadia into Pennsylvania, on account of some political suspicions, he felt deeply interested about them. In a country where few understood their language, they were wretched and helpless; but Anthony Benezet endeavoured to soften the rigour of their situation, by his kind attention towards them. He exerted himself, also, in their behalf, by procuring many contributions for them, which, by the consent of his fellow-citizens, were intrusted to his care.
As the principle of benevolence, when duly cultivated, brings forth fresh shoots, and becomes enlarged, so we find this amiable person extending the sphere of his usefulness by becoming an advocate for the oppressed African race. For this service he seems to have been peculiarly qualified. Indeed, as in all great works, a variety of talents is necessary to bring them to perfection, so Providence seems to prepare different men as instruments, with dispositions and qualifications so various, that each, in pursuing that line which seems to suit him best, contributes to furnish those parts which, when put together, make up a complete whole. In this point of view, John Woolman found in Anthony Benezet the coadjutor whom, of all others, the cause required. The former had occupied himself princ.i.p.ally on the subject of slavery. The latter went to the root of the evil, and more frequently attacked the trade. The former chiefly confined his labours to America, and chiefly to those of his own society there. The latter, when he wrote, did not write for America only, but for Europe also, and endeavoured to spread a knowledge and hatred of the traffic through the great society of the world.
One of the means which Anthony Benezet took to promote the cause in question, (and an effectual one it proved, as far as it went,) was to give his scholars a due knowledge and proper impressions concerning it.
Situated as they were likely to be in after-life, in a country where, slavery, was a custom, he thus prepared many, and this annually, for the promotion of his plans.
To enlighten others, and to give them a similar bias, he had recourse to different measures from time to time. In the almanacs published annually in Philadelphia, he procured articles to be inserted, which he believed would attract the notice of the reader, and make him pause, at least for a while, as to the licitness of, the Slave Trade. He wrote also, as he saw occasion, in the public papers of the day. From small things he proceeded to greater. He collected, at length, further information on the subject, and, winding it up with observations and reflections, he produced several little tracts, which he circulated successively (but generally at his, own expense), as he considered them adapted to the temper and circ.u.mstances of the times.
In the course of this his employment, having found some who had approved his tracts, and, to whom, on that account, he wished to write, and sending his tracts to others, to whom he thought it proper to introduce them by letter, he found himself engaged in a correspondence which much engrossed his time, but which proved of great importance in procuring many advocates for his cause.
In the year 1762, when he had obtained a still greater store of information, he published a larger work. This, however, he ent.i.tle _A short Account of that part of Africa inhabited by the Negroes_ In 1767 he published _A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her colonies on the calamitous state of the enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions_; and soon after this appeared, _An Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and the general Disposition of its Inhabitants: with an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, its Nature, and Calamitous Effects._ This pamphlet contained a clear and distinct development of the subject, from the best authorities. It contained also, the sentiments of many enlightened upon it; and it became instrumental beyond any other book ever before published, in disseminating a proper knowledge and detestation of this trade.
Anthony Benezet may be considered as one of the most zealous, vigilant, and active advocates which the cause of the oppressed Africans ever had.
He seemed to have been born and to have lived for the promotion of it and therefore he never omitted any the least opportunity of serving it.
If a person called upon him who was going a journey his first thoughts usually were how he could make him an instrument in its favour; he either gave him tracts to distribute or he sent letters by him, or he gave him some commission on the subject; so that he was the means of employing several persons at the same time, in various parts of America; in advancing the work he had undertaken.
In the same manner he availed himself of every other circ.u.mstance, as far as he could, to the same end. When he heard that Mr. Granville Sharp had obtained; in the year 1772, the n.o.ble verdict in the cause of Somerset the slave, he opened a correspondence with him which he kept up, that there might be an union of action between them for the future, as far as it could be effected, and that they might each give encouragement to the other to proceed.
He opened also a correspondence with George Whitfield and John Wesley that these might a.s.sist him in promoting the cause of the oppressed.
He wrote also a letter to the Countess of Huntingdon on the following subject:--She had founded a college, at the recommendation of George Whitfield, called the Orphan-house near Savannah, in Georgia, and had endowed it. The object of this inst.i.tution was to furnish scholastic instruction to the poor, and to prepare some of them for the ministry.
George Whitfield, ever attentive to the cause of the poor Africans, thought that this inst.i.tution might have been useful to them also; but soon after his death, they who succeeded him bought slaves, and these in unusual numbers to extend the rice and indigo plantations belonging to the college. The letter then in question was written by Anthony Benezet, in order to lay before the Countess, as a religious woman, the misery she was occasioning in Africa, by allowing the managers of her college in Georgia to give encouragement to the Slave Trade. The Countess replied, that such a measure should never have her countenance, and that she would take care to prevent it.
On discovering that the Abbe Raynal had brought out his celebrated work, in which he manifested a tender feeling in behalf of the injured Africans, he entered into a correspondence with him, hoping to make him yet more useful to their cause.
Finding, also, in the year 1783 that the Slave Trade, which had greatly declined during the American war, was reviving, he addressed a pathetic letter to our Queen, (as I mentioned in the last chapter,) who, on hearing the high character of the writer of it from Benjamin West, received it with marks of peculiar condescension and attention. The following is a copy of it:--
TO CHARLOTTE, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN.
Impressed with a sense of religious duty, and encouraged by the opinion generally entertained of thy benevolent disposition to succor the distressed, I take the liberty; very respectfully, to offer to thy perusal some tracts, which, I believe, faithfully describe the suffering condition of many hundred thousands of our fellow-creatures of the African race, great numbers of whom, rent from every tender connexion in life, are annually taken from their native land; to endure, in the American islands and plantations, a most rigorous and cruel slavery; whereby many, very many of them, are brought to a melancholy and untimely end.
When it is considered that the inhabitants of Great Britain, who are themselves so eminently blessed in the enjoyment of religious and civil liberty, have long been, and yet are, very deeply concerned in this flagrant violation of the common rights of mankind, and that even its national authority is exerted in support of the African Slave Trade, there is much reason to apprehend that this has been, and, as long as the evil exists, will continue to be, an occasion of drawing down the Divine displeasure on the nation and its dependencies. May these considerations induce thee to interpose thy kind endeavours in behalf of this greatly injured people, whose abject situation gives them an additional claim to the pity and a.s.sistance of the generous mind, inasmuch as they are altogether deprived of the means of soliciting effectual relief for themselves; that so thou mayest not only be a blessed instrument in the hand of him 'by whom kings reign and princes decree justice,' to avert the awful judgments by which the empire has already been so remarkably shaken, but that the blessings of thousands ready to perish may come upon thee, at a time when the superior advantages attendant on thy situation in this world will no longer be of any avail to thy consolation and support.
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