respect to the merits of this business, from ignorance of what the Quakers were in that day. It is a huge mistake, to suppose, as many do, that they were the same sort of excellent, inoffensive personages, as those whom we now see arrayed in sanctified drab, and hats with pious breadth of brim. Because this people are noted in our times, for their mild spirit and moral virtues, and are, in the main, good members of society, we are not to suppose at once, that they have been so from the beginning.

In truth, they were then a dangerous sect. Bishop Burnet wrote a letter to the Princess Sophia of Hanover, the mother of the first George, and ancestress of the present royal family of England. He penned this letter under the impression that that princess might soon be called to the British throne. He gives her information respecting the different sects of dissenters, considered in a political point of view;—or as to the manner in which their respective principles bore on the probable welfare of the government. Among other things, he says;-"The most ridiculous, and yet the most dangerous sect we have among us, is the Quakers." For this assertion the good bishop has been laughed to scorn;"What! the Quakers dangerous! a people so

intensely opposed to the shedding of blood, dangerous to the State! What folly!"

But after all, the bishop of Old Sarum was apt to know what he was talking about. He thought that people might be dangerous, though without dagger in hand, or pistol in belt. He saw that their transcendental notions about "inward light" were perilous to revealed relig ion, the main defence and support of Christian States. He saw, that their non-resistance sentiments must disarm the magistracy, and deprive justice of her sword, and subvert the order of society. Even the government of Rhode Island, in a letter to the General Court of Massachusetts, dated October, 1557, makes the following remark;-"We conceive, that their doctrines tend to very absolute cutting down and overturning relations and civil government among men, if generally received."* In 1655, the government and council of Rhode Island passed an order for outlawing the people called Quakers, because they would not bear arms, and to seize their estates; but the people in general rose up against these severe orders, and would not suffer it.†

In these colonies, the early Quakers did noth

* Hutchinson's History. I, 526.

+ Mass. Hist. Soc. Col. First Series. V. 219.

ing but inveigh with astonishing bitterness and rancor against the magistrates and ministers, whom, without waiting for any provocation they denounced with every odious epithet, stirring up with all their might the spirit of insubordination. Any one who knows in what profound veneration our ancestors held both Moses and Aaron, both the magistrate and the minister, must see what indignation the Quakers must have excited by their rabid railings against whom they called the "charter tyrants and the charter priests."

The followers of George Fox, without firing guns, or smiting with the sword, were wholesale breakers of the peace. Not content to operate within their own sphere, or to hold forth to such as were willing to hear them, they broke in everywhere without regard to decency and the just rights of others. In courts of justice they volunteered to assail the judges on the bench with furious tirades against them and their offices. If, tomorrow, any one were to be guilty of one tithe of the "contempt of court" they practiced, he would feel, with instant rigor, the strong arm of the law. In the churches, they would tumultuously disturb the order of public worship with their vociferous harangues. Men and women would carry on noisy mechanical operations in

the midst of divine service, by way of practically testifying their devout scorn of all carnal ordinances:-and this would be done through a succession of Sabbaths, unchecked by the inflic tion of the ordinary penalties for misdemeanors of that nature. Of late, we have seen certain noted men and women taken out of conventions and churches by main strength, because they would not restrain that unruly member, the tongue. Nay, our own civil tribunals have dealt with these characters according to course of law, for breaking the peace;-and yet the mal-practices so punished were trifling in comparison with those which harrowed the feelings and exhausted the patience of our forefathers. Perhaps the recent acts of our municipal tribunals may be cited a hundred years hence, to prove that the spirit of religious intolerance lingered even unto this day.

If, instead of giving full credence to the colored, distorted and falsified statements of the angry Quaker pamphlets, we have recourse to the records of our courts, as would be done in regard to any other matter, we shall find, that much of what has been called persecution, was but the punishment of gross misconduct committed under fanatical excitement. Such offences, if perpetrated to-day, would be as promptly punished by

our correctional police as by that of our fathers. It is true that some of the penalties imposed by the latter may seem, according to our ideas, excessively severe. But we must remember, that the penal codes of all Europe were then far more severe than at present. According to the scale of penal inflictions then in use, our fathers meant to apportion no sorer retribution than would now be imposed for the like misdeeds.

The Quakers were punished, in general, not as religious offenders, not as heretics, but as civil offenders, transgressing against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth. It is true, that, according to the records, they were arraigned as Quakers: but this was because the class of civil offences which the law was intending to take hold of, was then known by that name. If we read the minutes of evidence, we shall see the stress laid upon the disorderly behavior of the accused. Good Mr. Norton, in his doleful sermon, entitled "The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the present Generation," strongly disclaims the right of the magis trate to interfere with Quakers, or any other heretics, who were of quiet and peaceable deportment. But he argues, that they ought to be suppressed, when they become factious, turbulent and insurrectionary. These were the