36 Michèle DucketSectsIt was here that the anti-slavery movement, based on an ideology of protest
and rupture, first came into being. I agree with D. Brion Davis that the leaven
of the crusade against slavery and the slave trade is not to be sought in religious
tradition, but rather in the birth of a new concept which refused to regard the
established order as a compromise with sin, and gave God and the faithful the
power to transform the world.^18 It was this philosophy that was to give the
different sects the desire and the strength to put an end to what they regarded as
the most dire injustice, and by no means a road to salvation for the pagan
blacks. Moreover, sects like the Moravian Brethren and the Quakers had had
their share of persecution and exile, and their experience made them more alive to
the black slaves' lot. The Quakers' work, so highly praised by the philosophers,
is well known. But it should be recalled, if only to illustrate how powerful the
institution and force of habit were, that at the beginning the Quakers, too,
bought slaves; one can even go as far as to say that the prosperity of their
communities in the New World depended on slave labour, as did the wealth
of a large number of English traders who became Quakers. William Penn
himself owned slaves, and as late as 1730 the slave trade was practised in
Philadelphia.
The Quakers were ' good masters ', but they did not try to convert their
slaves or make them join their society, known as the Religious Society of
Friends. Seen in that perspective, their possession of slaves could not be justified
other than by the profit they derived from it: it became a sin. And if the mere
fact of owning slaves was reprehensible, surely trading in slaves was even more
so, as indeed was the traders' maltreatment of them?^19 The arguments put
forward by 'orthodox' theologians struck at the very heart of Quaker doctrine
on this point, their ideal of a simple, just life. Their very existence was chal-
lenged. But it was not until 1769 that the anti-slavery lobby won the battle
and had slavery abolished in Pennsylvania. The Quakers' image was greatly
enhanced by their role in this critical battle, and they were held up as an example
by all those who, for quite different motives, had begun to espouse the cause
of the Negroes. Their selfless action was heralded in the Ephémérides du
Citoyen by the French Physiocrats^20 and acclaimed by the Abbé Raynal in his
Histoire des Deux Indes as being the acts of'humane sectarians', of ' Christians
who sought virtues rather than dogma in the Gospel'.^21
This does not imply that there was a convergence between the 'humani-
tarianism' of the enlightenment and the philanthropic leanings of certain sects
or even of the churches themselves. It is more the evolution of religious thought
itself, as we have seen for the Quakers, which accounts for the emergence of
an anti-slavery feeling based on the affirmation of a new set of values and a
new moral code. But in Protestant Britain, it was more common for philan-