extremely moderate estates and very limited earnings, and almost
crushed it to the earth.

The people were dissatisfied with the new charter. They were becoming
the victims of political jealousies, discontent, and animosities. They
had been agitated by great revolutions. They were surrounded by
alarming indications of change, and their ears were constantly
assailed by rumors of war. Their minds were startled and confounded by
the prevalence of prophecies and forebodings of dark and dismal
events. At this most unfortunate moment, and, as it were, to crown the
whole and fill up the measure of their affliction and terror, it was
their universal and sober belief, that the Evil One himself was, in a
special manner, let loose, and permitted to descend upon them with
unexampled fury.

The people of Salem participated in their full share of the gloom and
despondency that pervaded the province, and, in addition to that, had
their own peculiar troubles and distresses. Within a short time, the
town had lost almost all its venerable fathers and leading citizens,
the men whose councils had governed and whose wisdom had guided them
from the first years of the settlement of the place. Only those who
are intimately acquainted with the condition of a community of simple
manners and primitive feelings, such as were the early New-England
settlements, can have an adequate conception of the degree to which
the people were attached to their patriarchs, the extent of their
dependence upon them, and the amount of the loss when they were
removed.

In the midst of this general distress and local gloom and depression,
the great and awful tragedy, whose incidents, scenes, and characters I