By ANTHONY BENEZET.

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* * * * * THE PREFACE.
As the subject of the following work has fortunately become of late a topick of conversation, I cannot begin the preface in a manner more satisfactory to the feelings of the benevolent reader, than by giving an account of those humane and worthy persons, who have endeavoured to draw upon it that share of the publick attention which it has obtained.
Among the well disposed individuals, of different nations and ages, who have humanely exerted themselves to suppress the abject personal slavery, introduced in the original cultivation of the _European_ colonies in the western world, _Bartholomew de las Casas_, the pious bishop of _Chiapa_, in the fifteenth century, seems to have been the first.

This amiable man, during his residence in _Spanish America_, was so sensibly affected at the treatment which the miserable Indians underwent that he returned to _Spain_, to make a publick remonstrance before the celebrated emperor _Charles_ the fifth, declaring, that heaven would one day call him to an account for those cruelties, which he then had it in his power to prevent.

The speech which he made on the occasion, is now extant, and is a most perfect picture of benevolence and piety.
But his intreaties, by opposition of avarice, were rendered ineffectual: and I do not find by any books which I have read upon the subject, that any other person interfered till the last century, when _Morgan Godwyn_, a _British_ clergyman, distinguished himself in the cause.
The present age has also produced some zealous and able opposers of the _colonial_ slavery.