in furs and other commodities was brisk and profitable. The English
Parliament passed a law exempting them from taxes. After so much
adversity, fortune was sending them a gleam of sunshine, and they were
making their hay. But something of the arrogance of prosperity must also
be accredited to them; the Puritans were never more bigoted and intolerant
than now. The persecution of the Quakers is a blot on their fame, only
surpassed by the witchcraft cruelties of the concluding years of the
century. Mary Dyar, and the men Robinson, Stephenson and Leddra were
executed for no greater crime than obtruding their unwelcome opinions, and
outraging the propriety of the community. The fate of Christison hung for
a while in the balance; he was not less guilty than the others, and he
defied his judges; he told them that where they murdered one, ten others
would arise in his place; the same words that had been heard many a time
in England, when the Puritans themselves were on their trial. Nevertheless
the judges passed the sentence of death; but the people were disturbed by
such bloody proceedings, and Christison was finally set free. It must not
be forgotten that the Quakers of this period were very different from
those who afterward populated the City of Brotherly Love under Penn. They
were fanatics of the most extravagant and incorrigible sort; loud-mouthed,
frantic and disorderly; and instead of observing modesty in their garb,
their women not seldom ran naked through the streets of horrified Boston,
in broad daylight. They thirsted for persecution as ordinary persons do
for wealth or fame, and would not be satisfied till they had provoked
punishment. The granite wall of Puritanism seemed to exist especially for
them to dash themselves against it. Such persons can hardly be deemed
sane; and it is of not the slightest importance what particular creed they
profess. They are opposed to authority and order because they are
authority and order; in our day, we group such folk under the name,
Anarchists; but, instead of hanging them as the Puritans did, we let them
froth and threaten, according to the policy of Roger Williams, until the