In no case has this Committee deemed it consistent to SEND any worker anywhere, or to do more than lay such invitation before him, leaving it to his own conviction of duty as to whether he can see his way to accept it or not.” (1888.) “With one exception, every Friend in connection with us has been engaged during the year to a greater or less extent in work outside the meeting in which he resides.” (1889.) NOTE C. Slavery. In the introduction by J. G. Whittier to a recent edition of John Woolman’s “Journal,”[33] there is a remarkable account of the manner in which our Society in America was gradually freed from all complicity with slavery, long before the struggle for its abolition was begun elsewhere; from which I venture to make some extracts, for the sake of the illustration it affords of the working both of our principles and of our machinery. From the time of George Fox himself, who in 1671 visited Barbadoes, and admonished those who held slaves there to bear in mind that they were brethren, and that “after certain years of servitude they should make them free,” voices had been raised again and again in several of the American meetings to witness against the buying and keeping of slaves. In 1742, John Woolman, then in the employment of a small storekeeper in New Jersey, was desired by his master to make out a bill of sale of a negro slave-woman. “On taking up his pen,” says Whittier, “the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his fellow-creatures oppressed him. God’s voice against the desecration of His image spoke in his soul. He yielded to the will of his employer, but while writing the instrument he was constrained to declare, both to the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent with the Christian religion.” This circumstance “was the starting-point of a lifelong testimony against slavery. “In the year 1746, he visited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It appeared to him, in his own words, ‘as a dark gloominess overhanging the land.’ On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he was compelled to sit down at the tables of slave-holding planters, who were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift food and lodging which he regarded as the gains of oppression. He was a poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore placed the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had opportunity....