man and a horse standing together in the public square or marketplace, as commodities for sale, and a heap of sugar by them-another man and a cow forward with calf,' and against them another heap of sugar; and imagine it put to thee to determine whether the two animals taken together, or the heap of sugar, in either case, was of the greater value; for precisely in that light did the Barbadians view the transaction: they saw nothing in the man but the animal!

Not so the Quakers: we read in a third case the following valueaccount of seizures, and remark :

1689. Case 22. Presented to George Stead. Thomas Pilgrim, for not appearing, and not sending men in arms, £80 5s. 9d.; for opening shop on the day called Christmas-day, £20 5s.; and for Church claims and priests' wages, £29 13s. 14d; in all, £130 3s. 10 d. Among these distresses, the spoilers seized the principal negro woman he had in his family, carrying her away from her husband, children, and grandchildren; though her master would not have separated her so from them for any money whatsoever.'

The 'grievance' of Slavery continues in our (shall I own them as a part of my country, I who profess to appear in its behalf against such wrongs?) in our West Indian colonies-but the Quakers are long since eradicated, as a people, there. Need we be surprised that, testifying as they did from the first against vice and immorality, and after a while against Slavery also, they should have been followed up by such proceedings as are here exhibited, until, their numbers gradually wasting away, the last of them was gone from every one of the islands ?

Let it not be thought that in reviving the memory of their sufferings I am in any way seeking an unworthy revenge for this people. I hold in the most implicit sense, respecting all wrongs in which the Law does not lay hold of the oppressor, the doctrine of that emphatic declaration, conveyed in Rom. xii. 9, and other Scriptures- Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.' But if we submit ourselves in this respect to God's will and Christ's injunction, does it thence follow that we should seek no redress, give ourselves no concern about the amendment of things?-Slavery is still the reproach of the nation in those islands; and Intolerance, expressed after an effectual though less violent manner, disgraces our Christian profession here. Let us seek still for an amelioration of our lot, and that of our oppressed fellow men, by the direct and honourable course of petition and representation to the Legislature; in order to a full remedy for the abuses and corruptions which have crept into the institutions of our country.

There is an awful view which may be taken of the very nature of the Christian revelation, with which I shall conclude this article, desiring that such characters as it concerns may ponder it well.

When our Lord went into the synagogue at Nazareth, and took the book of Isaiah from the hand of the minister (or attendant) to read in public, he found the place where it was written, 'The spirit

of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty those that are bound, to preach the acceptable, year of the Lord."

Why did Christ close the book at that precise sentence, and proceed no further? There follow immediately the words, and the day of vengeance of our God!"

9

Behold the terms, Reader! a long 'year' during which there is acceptance, the door being open, the Mediator standing at the right hand of the Majesty on high-a short day of vengeance on the impenitent, in which he who before was all meekness shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God-who are not his by the election of grace, because they would not! Luke iv. 16-20; Isa. lxi. 1, 2; 2 Thess. i. 7, 8; Matt. xxiii. 37.

I may have future occasion to return to the case of these friends in Barbadoes, and exhibit something further of the nature of the controversy between them and their oppressors, and the kind of arguments which each side employed. Ed.

An account has come from Sierra Leone of the death of our friend Hannah Kilham, on the passage between Liberia and that colony, which she was making in prosecution of her labours in behalf of the natives of the African Continent. As the news has been extensively published, though resting, I believe, on the authority of a single letter, I shall not give the full particulars here; but reserve it for the further communications, which may be expected, to her friends on the subject. But having been engaged, with other friends, in an attempt to form a little settlement under her on the Gambia river, I shall think it due to my readers to devote hereafter a few lines to a summary view of those proceedings.

Ed.

Communications may be addressed, POST PAID,

"For the Editor of the

Yorkshireman at the Printer's, Pontefract; at Longman & Co's, London;

Baines & Newsome's, Leeds; and W. Simpson's, York.

CHARLES ELCOCK, PRINTER, PONTEFRACT,

THE

YORKSHIREMAN,

A

RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY JOURNAL

No. III.

BY A FRIEND.

PRO PATRIA.

SEVENTH DAY, 25th EIGHтh Mo. 1832. PRICE 4d.

ART. I. On the Sufferings, personal and pecuniary, of the Quakers in England, on account of the Testimonies of the Society; and on their Causes.

1 said in my first number, in treating of our refusal to pay their alleged dues to the priesthood, that from the very beginning of our Society, we have had to suffer deeply in our property, and not very lightly in person also, on this account.' Let us first advert to the subject of personal sufferings.

The people called Quakers' were gathered in the time of the civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament, and the Society was first so named in 1650. William the Third was born in that year. Charles the Second took the Scottish Covenant, and was crowned, in 1651. Cromwell died in 1658. In 1659, a paper was presented to the Parliament, signed by 164 Quakers, offering their bodies (the parties being then in waiting in Westminster Hall) to lie in prison, in the places of an equal number of their brethren then in confinement. They say in this paper, 'We, in love to our brethren, that lie in prisons, and houses of correction, and dungeons, and many in fetters and irons, cruelly beaten by the gaolers (many persecuted to death who have died in prison, and many lie sick and weak on straw) do offer up our bodies and selves to you, to put us in the same dungeons and houses of correction, that they may go forth and not die; as many of our brethren are dead already. And if you will receive our bodies, which we freely tender to you for our friends, that are now in prison for speaking the truth in several places, for not paying Tithes, for meeting together in the fear of God, for not swearing, for wearing their hats, for being accounted as vagrants, for visiting friends, and

F

for things of the like nature, we whose names are hereunto subscribed (being a sufficient number to answer for the present sufferers) are waiting for an answer: to manifest our love to our friends, and to stop the wrath and judgment from coming upon our enemies ':—

I have omitted some passages of minor importance, which relate to a declaration to the Parliament, 6th April 1659, giving account of above 140 then in prison, and of 1,900 others who had suffered in the last six years, also of 21 imprisoned until death.-So much for personal sufferings in the first nine years of their being noticed as a people. The Monarchy was restored in 1660; to the aggravation of the already severe oppression under which they laboured: but of this more, hereafter.

In 1688 came the Revolution, which settled the kingly authority on a better basis, but left the Quakers in the power of the Clergy, through the laws against them and others, in force or unrepealed. Of these, in a petition to the King and both Houses in 1685, they enumerate ten, under any one of which they might be committed to prison, viz.—

For 12d. a Sunday absence from Church.

De excommunicato capiendo.

For £20 a month absence, &c.

For continuance of absence.

To abjure the realm on pain of death for Non-Conformity.
Penalties; Premunire, imprisonment for life, and confisca-
tion of estates.

Against Quakers specially, with penalty of transportation.
Against non-conformity.
Against seditious Conventicles.

instances,

27 Hen. VIII. c. 20. For Tithes to be paid throughout this realm.'

Nothing was proposed to Parliament, by the Clergy, in all this time, for removing the difficulty by gentler methods.

Now, as to property :—

In the Yearly Epistles of the Society, from the year 1700 forward, mention is regularly made of the amount of distraints made in the past year upon Friends, for Ecclesiastical and military purposes. The Clergy have caused the far greater proportion of these seizures. On the part of the Government it may be said, with much truth, that the Society receives, in return for property thus taken (because of conscientious scruples requiring a passive, in lieu of an active, compliance with the laws) the protection of their persons and estates from lawless spoil and violence. The Quakers believe, in common with other Christians, that the powers that be are ordained of God '— and ordained to be a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do well. From the Church', as the Clergy have managed to get themselves called (to the disinheriting the great body of believers of the name) they receive, in a direct way, no sort of service or protection whatever. And if it be alleged that the services of this body, by

inculcating the duties of the Christian religion upon the people, tend to the same end with those of the Magistrate, and are thus meritorious, this may be granted to a limited extent (the vast proportion of Dissenters considered) and they may be very reasonably referred to the Government itself for their reward; in which the teachers of the Dissenters would of course then partake. There appears, then, to have been taken from the members of this Society, by distraint, for Ecclesiastical purposes, in the ten years from

There remain the years previous to 1700, and the short time elapsed since the above account was made up. I shall deduce the former from the contents of the publication which I have so much occasion to use, entitled 'A Collection of the Sufferings of the people called Quakers, for the testimony of a good conscience, from the time of their being first distinguished by that name, in the year 1650, to the time of the Act commonly called the Act of Toleration, granted to Protestant Dissenters in the first year of the reign of King William the Third and Queen Mary, in the year 1689: Taken from original Records and other authentic accounts, by Joseph Besse. My copy is in two volumes, small folio; printed and sold by Luke Hinde, at the Bible, in George-yard, Lombard-street, 1753. From a consideration of these accounts, I cannot place the amount of these 45 years at less than £180,000, which is short of the proportion to the first ten years. I find distraints in Bedfordshire and Berkshire alone, in the space from 1655 to 1688, to the amount of £1,988, besides many seizures of goods not valued.

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In the year 1830, the Sufferings are stated at £14,600; in 1831, at £14,200; and in 1832, at £12,600. There is reason to believe that the whole of these distraints are not reported, some members having been prevailed upon to attach to them a less degree of importance than they did formerly: but it will be seen that the practice of Ecclesiastical exaction continues, with little abatement, to the present time.

On the whole account, and putting the very many distraints of which no account has ever been rendered to the Yearly Meeting against the small proportion of military seizures which could not be detached, (I have separated about £9,000) the Society, I believe, may affirm to