If it be asked whether at this time Pennsylvania was not rather decrying slavery among her neighbors than destroying it within her own gates, since beyond denial she still had slavery there, it must be answered that first, her slavery as regards magnitude was a veritable mote, and secondly, since after 1830, for example, there was not one slave in Pennsylvania under fifty years old, it was far more to the advantage of the negroes to remain in servitude where the law guaranteed them protection and good treatment, than to be set free, when their color and their declining years would have rendered their well-being doubtful. It is probable that such slavery as existed there in the last years was based rather on the kindness of the master and the devotion of the slave, than on the power of the one and the suffering of the other. It was a peaceful passing away. And so in connection with slavery Pennsylvania is seen to have been fortunate. Seeing at an early time the pernicious consequences of such an institution she was able, such were the circumstances of her economic environment, and such was the character of her people, to check it so effectually that it never assumed threatening bulk. Almost as quick to perceive the evil of it, she acted, and while others moralized and lamented, she set her slaves free. Moreover as if to atone for the sin of slave-keeping she granted her freedmen such privileges that it seemed to her ardent idealists that the future could not but promise well. Whether this liberality came to be a matter of regret in after years, and whether because of circumstances sure to come, but as yet unforeseen, it was possible for the experience of Pennsylvania with her free black population to be as happy as that with her slaves, it will be the purpose of later chapters to enquire. FOOTNOTES: [200] Edmundson's _Journal_, 61. Janney, _History of the Friends_, III, 178. [201] Pennypacker, "The Settlement of Germantown," in _Pa. Mag._, IV, 28; McMaster, "The Abolition of Slavery in the United States," in _Chatauquan_, XV, 24, 25 (Apr., 1892). For the protest against slavery and the slave-trade (_De instauranda Æthiopum Salute_, Madrid, 1647) of the Jesuit, Alfonso Sandoval, _cf._ Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo_, 253-256. [202] Pennypacker, _place cited_; Learned, _Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius_, 261, 262. Facsimile of protest in Ridgway Branch of the Library Company of Philadelphia. [203] The Monthly Meeting declared "we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here." Pennypacker, _place cited_, 30, 31.