[Footnote A: It then appeared that individuals among those of the church of
England, Roman Catholics, presbyterians, methodists, and, others, had begun
in a few instances to liberate their slaves.]
This disposition however became more manifest in the year 1772; for the
house of burgesses of Virginia presented a petition to the King, beseeching
his majesty to remove all those restraints on his governors of that colony,
which inhibited their assent to such laws, as might check that inhuman and
impolitic commerce, the Slave-trade: and it is remarkable, that the refusal
of the British government to permit the Virginians to exclude slaves from
among them by law, was enumerated afterwards among the public reasons for
separating from the mother country.
But this friendly disposition was greatly increased in the year 1773, by
the literary labours of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia[A], who, I
believe, is a member of the presbyterian church. For in this year, at the
instigation of Anthony Benezet, he took up the cause of the oppressed
Africans in a little work, which he entitled An Address to the Inhabitants
of the British Settlements on the Slavery of the Negros; and soon
afterwards in another, which was a vindication of the first, in answer to
an acrimonious attack by a West Indian planter.
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