/40TE ON CHANDLER'S AMERICAN STATE TRIALS. THE following letter, in
reference to a passage in the notice of American State Trials, comes, we believe, from a respected mem- ber of the Society of Friends.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Leominster, November 1842.
May I request insertion in your paper of a few remarks on a late review of CHANDLER S American State Trials; in which article I think I perceive a degree of sectarian prejudice manifested towards the Quakers of the seven- teenth century, to me wholly unaccountable in the Spectator. The passage which has more particularly called forth my attention is the following. "The persecutions of the Quakers hare often been adduced as an example of New England fanaticism, and of the bloody spirit that animated the Puritans. Of the fanaticism there is no doubt ; but, looking at the opinion of the age, and the circumstances under which the colony was founded, the charge of bloody-minded persecution must be received with some limitations. The Quakers were intruders into the colony, and, bating that they were English subjects, foreign intruders. A cruel and extremely penal spirit, no doubt, characterizes the lass against them, (it was also characteristic of the age,) but the object was to deter persons from bringing them into the jurisdic- tion, and to confine them until they could be expelled. When these measures failed of effect, they were banished under pain of death, and though several on returning were executed, the execution rested with themselves : they had the option of undertaking to leave the colony ; but as they had come into it u ith- out any secular vocation or rational purpose, and solely to brave their fate in obedience to 'the inner light,' they refused. It must also be remarked, that freedom of opinion for themselves was not so much their object, as the freedom of insulting the opinion of others." Such is the version not merely of American State Trials, (with exports additions by the editor,) but with superadded inferences, brought forward on the. occasion, on the part of the Spectator. The historian of the Society of Friends, SEWELL, who wrote about the year 1690, gives, however, a very dif- ferent version of the facts of the case. These facts may unquestionably be doubted, on the principle not long ego assumed by a learned Judge, that Ruakers are singularly unworthy of credit as witnessea! Be this as it may, it is surely very obvious, that in matters touching theological facts, it is not alSvays safe to accept of evidence brought exclusively from one side ; other-
how would the facts of history be perverted in alleges of the world? As it is, such party tampering with facts is found to exercise a prodigious influence. Row many haters of the Roman Catholics accept Fox's Book of Martyrs as a second Gospel ?
" Bating that they were English subjects, the Quakers were foreign in- truders." If there be no confusion of ideas here, emanating from the extreme of partisanship, I know not where to look for it. The inference, however, appears to be that the Pilgrim Fathers, as they have been called, went out fully furnished with a right, natural and legal, to require a theological test from all who came out as the occupants of laud, or for the purpose of exerciaing a calling in the colony. I merely observe upon this, that had WILLIAM PENN required such a test in the colony of Pennsylvania, apart from its flagrant impractica- bility, it would have proved a lasting stigma upon his name. The cruel nature of the punishments to which the Quakers were subjected has been in substance acknowledged in the Spectator's review ; and as reported by SEWELL, they are too horrible for repetition in the present day. It appears, however, that one of the most ready instruments ot oppression was a fine of five shillings a week for not coming to church; and this in an age when the true principles of religious liberty had long been enunciated, and when the oppressors had emigrated professedly to secure that great privilege for them- selves ! " There was," says our historian, " a fine of five shillings a week for not coming to church, as it was called ; and thus, from time to time occasion was found to use cruelty against the inhabitants, though none of those called Quakers came from abroad." lie proceeds to detail the punishment inflicted on OHO Wismem SIIATTOCR, a shoemaker of Boston, for non-attendance at the pub.. lie worship. That the Quakers in New England in the seventeenth century " reviled all orders of magistrates and every civil institution," is stated with the utmost broadness by the author of the State Trials. Such a line of con- duct, it is, however, scarcely necessary to say, is totally opposed to every prin- ciple and doctrine professed by the Society, and to their established " Testi- monies" from the beginning. The case of gross indecency, reported with so much minuteness by the Spec- tator, it might have been supposed, would, on his own principles, have been deemed clearly a case of insanity ; such, at least, would have been the charitable construction. We have, however, yet to learn, that even in the seventeenth century either the cat-o'-nine-tails or the halter were deemed the fitting punish- ment for lunacy.
I shall with brevity refer to the standing sneer of the Spectator and others on the subject of " the inner light," for the purpose of introducing a passage on the subject by a late lamented inhabitant of Boston, who, it can scarcely be denied, had at least some appreciation of the beautiful and true. Addressing the Mercantile Library Company of Philadelphia, May 1841, Dr. CHARRING has these words—" In the city of Penn, I cannot but remember the testimony to this truth, (that God is no respecter of persons,) borne by George Fox and his followers, who planted themselves on the grand principle that God's illuminating spirit is shed on every soul, not only within the bounds of Christendom but through the whole earth." 'The object of the Quakers was not so much to !secure freedom of opinion for themselves as to insult the opinions of others." Their object, I take it, was to diffuse their own principles, under a conviction of religious duty, mis- taken or otherwise. I only add, that if they were chargeable with "insulting the opinions of others," so must the numerous missionaries who leave the British shores for the purpose of supplanting by Christianity other systems and doctrines. The chief causes of offence, however, on the part of the Friends, "appear to have been the refusal of bat honour," and their protest against a paid ministry. The former is too frivolous a charge to demand serious refutation : the displeasure shown against the latter appears to indicate an unusual degree of sectarian rancour on the part of the colonists, and the more particularly out of the limits of a State Church. The assailants of the Society of Friends have usually been the enemies of human progression. 1 do not charge this upon the Spectator; but I contend, that, with all their faults and imperfections, it does not become the friends of civil and religious liberty to appear as their traducers. J. S.
Our correspondent seems not altogether without that "sectarian prejudice" in favour of the sect of Quakers which he attributes to the Spectator against them. In the article in question, we had no "prejudice" against any one; unless it be prejudice to endeavour to discover the truth, and to hold the scales as equally as we can between two parties. Our remarks on the Puritan persecutions were not intended to justify those persecutions, but to account for them—to show that, judged by circumstances and the spirit of the age, they were not so identical with the worst persecutions of the Romanists as on a superficial consideration they might appear to be. As regards the point of ,the Quakers "being foreign intru- ders," no doubt all persecution for mere opinion is wrong in prin- ciple, under all circumstances. But, practically, the common sense of mankind will always draw a strong distinction between the per- secution of native-born residents, for entertaining opinions that have grown up in a society, and have most probably some founda- tion in their social circumstances, and the obtrusion, by strangers, of new notions, that have no such necessity to plead. To the first class belong the Romanist persecutions of the Waldenses in the Alps, of the Huguenots in France, of the Lollards in England, and of the Jews and heretics in Spain. We conceive that the itrst Quakers in New England come under the second category. '1 hey were not born in the colony ; they did not go thither for purposes of settlement, nor even, it would appear, for any temporary business, but simply in obedience to an impulse or "inner light," which must always be questionable evidence except to its possessors. And in their manner of" diffusing their own principles," we still think they needlessly "insulted the opinions of others."
With respect to some of the historical facts alleged by our cor- respondent, we imagine they refer to rather a later period than the time of the State Trials in CHANDLER; but we will not put our reading in Quaker history in opposition to his. That point, how. ever, is of little moment. We expressly stated that "the laws against the Quakers were characterized by a cruel and extremely penal spirit."
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