As
several learned gentlemen of distinguished abilities, as
well as eminent for their great humanity, liberality and candour, have
written
various essays against that infamous traffic of the Afican Slave Trade,
carried
on with the West-India planters and merchants, to the great shame and
disgrace
of all Christian nations wherever it is admitted amongst them; it cannot
be amiss
that I should thankfully acknowledge these truly worthy and humane
gentlemen with
the warmest sense of gratitude, for their beneficent and laudable endeavours
towards a total suppression of that infamous and iniquitous traffic
of stealing,
kidnapping, buying , selling, and cruelly enslaving men!
Those
who have endeavoured to restore to their fellow-creatures the common
rights of nature, of which especially the poor unfortunate Black People
have been
so unjustly derived, cannot fail in meeting with the applause of all
good men, and
the approbation of that which will for ever redound to their honor;
they have the
warrant of that which is divine: "Open thy mouth, judge righteously,
plead the cause
of the poor and needy;" for "the liberal deviseth liberal things, and
by liberal
things shall stand." And they can say with the pious Job, "Did I not
weep for him
that was in trouble, was not my soul grieved for the poor?...(58)
