ſolitary blaſt in the ears of his brother magiſtrates and the people, who liſtened in amazement and wonder, not unmingled with ſorrow and contempt. His performance is all the more remarkable from the fact that it ſtands out in the hiſtory of the time ſeparate and diſtinct as "the voice of one crying in the wilderneſs."
Samuel Sewall, at that time a Judge of the Superior Court, and afterwards Chief-Juſtice, publiſhed a brief tract in 1700, entitled: "The Selling of Joſeph a Memorial." It filled three pages of a folio ſheet, ending with the imprint: "Boſton of the Maſſachuſetts; Printed by Bartholomew Green and John Allen. June 24th, 1700."
The author preſented a copy of this tract "not only to each member of the General Court at the time of its publication, but alo to numerous clergymen and literary gentlemen with whom he was intimate." MS. Letter. Compare Briſſſot, i., 224. Although thus extenſively circulated at that day, it has for many years been known apparently only by tradition, as nearly all the notices of it which we have ſeen are confined to the fact of its publication early in the eighteenth century, the date being nowhere correctly ſtated.
Beyond this, it appears to have been unknown to our hiſtorians, and is now reproduced probably for the firſt time in the preſent century. Indeed, we have met with no quotation even from it later than 1738, when it was reprinted in Pennſylvania, where antiſlavery took an earlier and deeper root, and bore earlier fruit, than in any other part of America.[1]
- ↑ It was reprinted as a part of Benjamin Lay's tract, "All Slave-Keepers that keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apoſtates …," in which it occupies
