The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-30
THE JULY MAGAZINES.
GOLD AND NEW"

England" r. p. Hallowell; Talk About the
Tea-Table, Commonplace, 1. G. Meredith;
''The Portrait" =. ii. Whitman; american
Bishops and Infallibility,' 1. B. Torricelli
''The Woman Question" D. H. Ella; 'Life
and Life-Force," G.. NJ. Kellogg "Thorwald-
sens Lion, at Lucerne;" "John Whopper, the
Newsboy," chap. i; "Alice to Gertrude" e.
w. Loring "The Gallery of the Porte Yec-
chio;" '"The Mystics Prayer" S. R. Calthrop
Harrisburg, and How to Find it," Julia
Ward Howe; ''Hope;" ''The Hidden Hemi-
sphere" Walter Mcleod; ''The Examiner"
''Record of Progress"
We make the following quotation from Mr..
Hallowell's very interesting paper on ''The
Quakers in New England"
The fanaticism of New England Quakers
has been so long taken for granted, that
mere reference to these people is suggestive
of violence, indecency, and rant; but that it
is overestimated and exaggerated is evident
from all the reliable information we have upon
the subject. The custom is to Judge the
entire body of Quakers by the action of few
exceptional cases; and we are gravely asked
to believe that Mary Dyer was hung in Boston
because Lydia Wardwell appeared in the town
of Newbury without her garments. The fact
that this event occurred after the execution
of Mary Dyer is of trifing Importance to the
jealous defenders of the Founders.
In the Jail, at the whipping post, and on
The scaffold, these heroic people displayed a
fortitude worthy the cause for which they
suffered-the cause of religious liberty Their
lives were pure and spotless: no one has yet
been able to stain their memory with dis
honesty, or immortality of any kind Strong
in the faith that they were doing God service
in struggling for their rights, they would have
been less than human had they not uttered
their righteous indignation, and denounced
their prosecutors.
To us the act of Lydia Wardwell is evil
dence of insanity. She was modest woman,
and, strange as it appears performed the act
complained of under a sense of religious duty.
She meant it for 'sign" unto those who
had stripped women to whip them. The
authorities had caused women to be driven
through the streets, barred to their waists, and
to be fogged as they dragged themselves
along They had ordered Ann Austin and
Mary Fisher to be stripped naked and ex-
amined for witch marks. Lydia Wardwel's
act was one of highly-wrought, shocking
fanaticism. Was the act of the Founders
mere comedy" as it has been called or
was it a deed of wretched fanaticism more to
be censured than its counterpart because
cruel and diabolical?
In extravaganza of language the Puritans
at least rivalled their victims: in fanaticism
while the intensity of feeling may have been
equal, in the one case it was signalized by
acts of cruelty, and in the other by lofty in
difference and a sublime heroism.
During her imprisonment, Mary Dyer ad-
dressed letter to the General Court at
Boston, of which the following is an extract:
offer it as fitting illustration of the temper
and spirit in which the Quakers confronted
their Prosecutors
''And have you no other weapons to fight
with against spiritual wickedness, as you call
it? Search with the light of Christ in you,
and it will show you of whom you take coun-
sci. 1t is not my own life seek,
but the life of the seed which 1 know the
Lord hath blessed. And know this that,
if you confirm your law, the Lord will over
throw both your law and you, by His righteous
judgments and plaques poured justly upon
YOU. In love, and ia the spirit of meekness,
1 again beseech you, for 1 have no enmity
to the persons of any; but you shall know
that God will not be Knocked"
In studying the history of peo-
pie or a sect, if we aim at an impair
tial estimate of their character and
their value to posterity, we must regard them
from their own point of view, test them in
the light of their own generation, and judge
them by the requirements of our present
civilization.
The sincerity of both the Founders and the
Quakers we think has never been seriously
questioned. The Founders secuted the pos
sIbility of Divine revelation beyond the
limits of the Bible. Their Christianity was
Judaism full blown. Believing implicitly in
a theocracy, they attempted to administer
civil government by statutes derived mainly
from the Old Testament. The Quakers, with
courageous fidelity, asserted that the soul of
man is still accessible to God, and claimed
religious liberty to be the natural right of all
men. A conflict between these radically
different ideas was inevitable. The Puritans
invited the conflict. They were the ag-
gressors. AS early as 1864 they challenged
the Quakers by enacting a law for
bidding the importation of their
books. Again in 1868, they threw down
the gauntlet by prohibiting the intrusion
of Quaker upon their soil. We shall not
stop to examine the value of their claim to
absolute jurisdiction, and, as a consequence,
to the right to enact this prohibitory law.
We are examining the case from the respective
standpoints of the contending parties; and it
is sufficient to know that they sincerely
claimed such right. 1t is sufficient also tc
know that the Quakers as sincerely denied it
They had ''heard that New England had made
law to put the servants of the living Goo
to death;" and, Drawing the perils of the
sea, they sought out this land, where
religious liberty was crucihed
where the Servants of the Lord" were
forbidden to serve Him. 1t was divine mis-
sion that brought them here. We are told
''they had no rights or business here; and
simple prohibition ought to have been suff
cient even to release their conscience
from all obligation to meddle with
other peoples consciences." A simpl,