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How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren.
Poetry demands a richer and more various culture, and, however good we may find such men as John Woolman and Elias Boudinot, they make us feel painfully that the salt of the earth is something very different, to say the least, from the Attic variety of the same mineral.
The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman. At the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength, and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among the foundations of society.
Casting off as he spoke his outer garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat underneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a large book, he drew his sword with the other. John Woolman makes no mention of this circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit.
A little later, in the generation before the Revolution, came the Quaker, John Woolman, a gentle and lovely soul, known among his people as a kind of lay evangelist, traveling among their communities to utter sweet persuasive words of holiness and uplifting; known in our day by his Journal, a book of saintly meditations.
The former of these, having taken an active part in several of the yearly meetings of his own Society relative to the oppressed Africans, and having been in habits of intimacy and friendship with John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, with the result of whose labours he was acquainted, may be supposed to have become qualified to take a leading station in the promotion of their cause. Dr.
Benjamin Robins was the son of a tailor, of Bath; he compiled Lord Anson's Voyage round the World. Elliott's regiment of light-horse was chiefly composed of tailors; and the first man who suggested the idea of abolishing the Slave Trade, was Thomas Woolman, a quaker, and tailor, of New Jersey.
In mediæval England the manufacture of cloth from the wool of the great flocks of sheep which fed on the pasture lands of the monasteries and other great houses, was the chief industry of the nation. This trade of wool-weaving has given us many surnames, such as Woolmer, Woolman, Carder, Kempster, Towser, Weaver, Webster, etc.
I rather grudge that Southey has taken up the history of your people; I am afraid he will put in some levity. I am afraid I am not quite exempt from that fault in certain magazine articles, where I have introduced mention of them. Were they to do again, I would reform them. Why should not you write a poetical account of your old worthies, deducing them from Fox to Woolman?
It is in folio, and is the abstract of the journals of Fox, and the primitive Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than any thing you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. Get the Writings of John Woolman by heart; and love the early Quakers.
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