" And in his
Journal, speaking of the advice, which he gave his friends at Barbadoes, he
says, "I desired also, that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly
and gently with their Negros, and not to use cruelty towards them, as the
manner of some had been, and that after certain years of servitude they
should make them free."
William Edmundson, who was a minister of the Society, and, indeed, a
fellow-traveller with George Fox, had the boldness in the same island to
deliver his sentiments to the governor on the same subject. Having been
brought before him and accused of making the Africans Christians, or, in
other words, of making them rebel and destroy their owners, he replied,
"that it was a good thing to bring them to the knowledge of God and Christ
Jesus, and to believe in him who died for them and all men, and that this
would keep them from rebelling, or cutting any person's throat; but if they
did rebel and cut their throats, as the governor insinuated they would, it
would be their own doing, in keeping them in ignorance and under
oppression, in giving them liberty to be common with women, like brutes,
and, on the other hand, in starving them for want of meat and clothes
convenient; thus giving them liberty in that which God restrained, and
restraining them in that which was meat and clothing.
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