To our fellow members of the Religious Society of Friends

              TO OUR FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
There is probably no proposition in political economy more indisputable than that the demand for an article which human industry
or ingenuity can produce, will infallibly bring it into the market. Many of the improvements in science may be traced to the de¬
mand created by the wants and refinements of the age.
The mechanical arts advance or recede according as the demand for their products improves or declines. Numerous instances
might be given, of manufactures having flourished in one age and disappeared in the next, for no other reason than because there
was no longer a demand for their products.
Numerous tracts were issued, proving and exposing the evils of intemperance; yet the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits
could not be prevented, so long as a large demand remained. But where the progress of temperance has excluded the demand, the
manufacture and sale have ceased of course.
The iniquity of the African slave trade is now generally acknowledged  and but few can be found who will undertake the defence
of slavery, upon rational or christian principles; yet the former is prosecuted in defiance of laws, human and divine, and the latter
is maintained in half the states of the Union, and, in many of them, with a tenacity which manifests the hold it has taken on the
passions and prejudices of the people. Not- tfeis arises from the interests, real or imaginary, which are involved in the system.
Men are seized on the African shore and transported to the western world, because they can be sold here, and held in hereditary
slavery; and they are bought here because a profit is supposed to be deducible from their labour. Slavery confers a mercantile
value on the victims of the trade  and the demand for the products of slave labour sustains this mercantile value in the persons of
the slaves and their posterity. Human beings are converted into chattels, and retained in that unnatural, condition, simply because
the products of their extorted labour find, or are supposed to find, a remunerating value in the market. Thus slavery and the
slave trade, like arts and manufactures, are necessarily supported by the demand for their products. If we could close the markets
of the world against the productions of slave labour, we should annihilate the value of the property, which is supposed to be vested
in the persons of men, and leave the moral and religious objections to slavery at liberty to exercise their force without the coun¬
teracting influence of interest. If those who are conscientiously opposed to the holding of slaves would agree to apply the same
practical rule to this evil as to others—to manifest their disapprobation of slavery, by withholding their aid from its support—there
can be no reasonable doubt that a sensible impression might be made, without strife or commotion, on this great opprobrium of the
western world.
Many of the articles now generally produced by the labour of slaves. are among the common conveniences of life  but the total
abandonment of the use of these articles is not necessary, for they may be produced by the labour of freemen. The productions of
tropical climates are among the provisions supplied by the all bountiful hand, for the convenience and comfort of man, and as such
ought to be received with thankfulness. But the Most High never made a slave to cultivate them. He created freemen, and man
made slaves. Whatever his hand has supplied for our use may be, and ought to be cultivated and manufactured by the hands of
freemen. Whatever slaves can perform may be accomplished by hands which the Creator made free.
It is well known that neither slaves nor their masters prosecute their business with the energy and skill which appear where the
operatives are free. Hence it is generally found that the products of slave labour are more costly than those of free. If in any
case the former come into the market on lower terms than the latter, the difference is only a part of what is deducted from the lives
and comforts of the operatives; for a large part of the profits of slave labour is employed in supporting the idleness and negligence
of the masters. The expense of keeping the slaves in subjection, of preventing elopements, and recovering fugitives, must also be
charged on the system.
Consequently, an effort to supply the market through the instrumentality of free labour, with those articles which are now mostly
extracted from the drudgery of slaves, is an attempt to substitute, for a wasteful and demoralizing species of cultivation, an im¬
proved method, to which neither moral nor economical objections can be made.
So far, indeed, is such a course from being a compulsive one, that its primary object is to substitute encouragement for compulsion 
to steer clear of connection with a system of force, and to promote voluntary exertions among managers and labourers. It would be
a lame objection to the labours of the friends of temperance, that they are compelling the distillers and retailers of liquors to
abandon their employments. Yet the argument would be as just as in the case before us. If the markets of the world were instantly
closed against the products of slave labour, they might be opened immediately by emancipating the slaves.
In order to procure an union of efforts among Friends, it is now proposed to form an association within the limits of Philadel¬
phia Yearly Meeting, for the special purpose of promoting and encouraging the production, by free labour, of the articles which
are generally procured from servile hands.
With this view, a meeting of a number of Friends was convened in Philadelphia, on the 23d of Fourth month, 1845, and a Com¬
mittee was appointed to prepare a Constitution. CW*''"'?' *rtv»  1*> rr\eetu ou-P>
lj<S  *i  \  The subscribers, on behalf and by direction of that meeting, now respectfully invite such of their feTiow-members of our reli-
t^  1  gious Society, as approve of the measure and are willing to take part in the labour, to meet at Clarkson Hall, north side of Cherry,
above  Sixth street, in the city of Philadelphia, on Sixth day. the 20th of Sixth month, 1845, at 3 o'clock, P. M. when the Consti-
U'  tution prepared by the Committtee will be submitted for consideration, revision and adoption.
ENOCH LEWIS,
} '19 5 OO 12 £ 2ISO SAMUEL HILLES,
WILLIAM KIRKWOOD,
GEORGE W. TAYLOR,
WM. J. ALLINSON,
THOMAS WISTAR, Jk.
ABM. L. PENNOCK,
DILLWYN SMITH,
EDWARD GARRETT,
SAMUEL RHOADS.