U.S.16972,60

J. H. & Car k

Besten

District of Pennsylvania, to wit:

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the twenty-fifth day of February, in the forty-first year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1817, JAMES P. PARKE, of the said District, hath deposited in this office, the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words following, to wit:

Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet. By
Roberts Vaux.

"He was the offspring of humanity,

And every child of sorrow was his brother"

In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned." And also to the act, entitled, " An act supplementary to an act, entitled, An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the time therein mentioned," and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints.”

D. CALDWELL,

Clerk of the District of Pennsylvania.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

WHEN this work was about to be undertaken, the writer presumed that ample materials might be procured, to render it altogether worthy of the character of Anthony Benezet. But although only thirty-two years have elapsed since his death, no traces are discernible of the mass of important and interesting documents, which must have accumulated during more than fifty of the last years of his life; devoted as it continually was, to the most benevolent labours, in relation

to many of which, he maintained an epistolary correspondence with men of celebrity, in America and Europe. If access could have been had to the stock of original papers, which were no doubt preserved by him, they would have minutely and regularly unfolded the history of his numerous and various transactions. Instead therefore, of a finished portraiture of the life of this excellent man, the author regrets, that from the relics which have escaped an oblivion so unaccountable, he is only enabled to furnish a mere sketch of some of its features. He trusts however, that enough is developed in the subsequent pages, justly to entitle the subject of them, to be considered as having been an illus. trious benefactor of the human race.

And although he never sought to have awarded to him by the world, an appellation so dignified, the record of evidence which establishes his claim to it, may serve to awaken desires in the mind of the reader, to pursue the footsteps of this humble philanthropist, in the hope of obtaining, like him, the imperishable reward, which is dispensed in Heaven.

Birwood Lodge, Eighth Month, 1816.

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