Throughout the colonial period the Society of Friends showed more or less opposition to slavery, although the members of the Society held slaves. From 1688 a certain amount of agitation concerning the matter is apparent in the records of the various quarterly and yearly meetings in Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. In the records of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for the year 1719, is found the first mention of Indian slaves made in the minutes of the Yearly Meeting. In that year, after an earnest admonition to Friends to refrain from selling, trading or exchanging in any way any spirituous liquors with the Indians, the Yearly Meeting voted: “And to avoid giving them occasion of discontent, it is desired, that Friends do not buy or sell Indian slaves.”[1235] From the wording of the record it may be concluded that the basis for the Friends’ action was not the idea of any moral wrongdoing attached to the enslavement of Indians, but rather the possible harm that might come to the colony through the discontent which enslavement might cause among the free Indians. And, judging from the previous action of the Society taken with regard to slavery, it may also be concluded that this basis for the opposition to the trade in Indian slaves was used as a means of calling the immediate attention of its members to the matter, and that the reason for the opposition of the Meeting to trading in Indians was the same as that to negro slavery: “caution not censure”.[1236] Some criticism was expressed in Massachusetts at the seizure of the Indians at Cocheco in 1676, and the subsequent transportation of part of the number captured by order of the government.[1237] Such criticism, however, was not aimed at the action of the government in selling the Indians as slaves, but at the breach of faith in seizing Indians at peace. In South Carolina, as already observed,[1238] the proprietors sanctioned enslavement of Indians when carried on for their own financial benefit, and opposed it when carried on by the colonial authorities. The colonial officials favored the practice and carried it on both as a means of meeting colonial expenses and as a source of personal income. In this respect the action of the existing colonial government of South Carolina differs materially from that of the officials of any other colony. Nowhere else was the desire for personal gain a controlling cause for the disposal of captives taken in war and hence colonial property.