the quaker background and abolitionism were significant in the setting-up of the society. the quaker meeting for sufferings set up a committee on the issue in 1837, at hodgkin's prompting, and in 1838 backed buxton's select parliamentary committee by publishing under its own name extracts from the evidence it had taken. it appeared as "information respecting the aborigines in the british colonies"; it was drafted by john hodgkin but then rewritten by his brother thomas, to sharpen the effect and reduce the references to missionary activity. the "report" of the aps in 1838 put the case that colonisation did not inevitably have detrimental effects on indigenous peoples, as conventional wisdom had it, even to the point of their extinction: if the effects were negative, that was a criticism of the plan and regulation for the colony.