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heels so long that the blood was ready to gush from them. The confession of her daughter, a child of seven years old, is still preserved.

The aged Jacobs was condemned, in part, by the evidence of Margaret Jacobs, his granddaughter. Through the magistrates' threatenings and my own vile heart," thus she wrote to her father, —“I have confessed things contrary to my conscience and knowledge. But, O! the terrors of a wounded conscience who can bear?" And she confessed the whole truth before the magistrates. The magistrates refused their belief, and, confining her for trial, proceeded to hang her grandfather.

These five were condemned on the third, and hanged on the nineteenth, of August. On the ladder, Burroughs cleared his innocence by an earnest speech, repeating the Lord's prayer composedly and exactly, and with a fervency that astonished. Tears flowed to the eyes of many; it seemed as if the spectators would rise up to hinder the execution. Cotton Mather, on horseback among the crowd, addressed the people, cavilling at the ordination of Burroughs, as though he had been no true minister; insisting on his guilt, and hinting that the devil could sometimes assume the appearance of an angel of light and the hanging proceeded.

On the ninth of September, six women were condemned, and more convictions followed. Giles Cory, the octogenarian, seeing that all were convicted, refused to plead, and was condemned to be pressed to death. The horrid sentence, a barbarous usage of English law, never again followed in the colonies, was executed forthwith.

On the twenty-second of September, eight persons were led to the gallows. Of these, Samuel Wardwell had confessed, and was safe; but, from shame and penitence, he retracted his confession, and, speaking the truth boldly, he was hanged, not for witchcraft, but for denying witchcraft. Martha Cory was, before execution, visited in prison by Parris, the two deacons

and another member of his church. The church record tells that, self-sustained, she "imperiously" rebuked her destroyers, and "they pronounced the dreadful sentence of excommunication against her." In the calmness with which Mary Easty exposed the falsehood of those who had selected from her family so many victims, she joined the noblest fortitude with sweetness of temper, dignity, and resignation. But the chief judge was positive that all had been done rightly, and was very impatient in hearing any thing that looked another way."

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Already twenty persons had been put to death for witchcraft; fifty-five had been tortured or terrified into penitent confessions. With accusations, confessions increased; with confessions, new accusations. Even "the generation of the children of God" were in danger of falling under that condemnation." The jails were full. Yet the zeal of Stoughton was unabated, and the arbitrary court adjourned to the first Tuesday in November; while Cotton Mather, still eager "to lift up a standard against the infernal enemy," prepared his narrative of "The Wonders of the Invisible World," in

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the design of promoting a pious thankfulness to God for justice being so far executed among us."

On the second Wednesday in October, 1692, about a fortnight after the last hanging of eight at Salem, the representatives of the people assembled; and the people of Andover, their minister joining with them, appeared with their remonstrance against the doings of the witch tribunals. "We know not," say they, "who can think himself safe, if the accusations of children, and others under a diabolical influence, shall be received against persons of good fame." Of the discussions that ensued no record is preserved; we know only the issue. The general court did not place itself in direct opposition to the advocates of the trials: it repealed the old colonial law against witchcraft, by adopting the English law, word for word, as it stood in the English statute book it abrogated the special court, estab

1693.]

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lishing a tribunal by public law. Phipps still conferred the place of chief judge on Stoughton; yet now, jurors, representing the public mind, would act independently. When the court met at Salem, in January, 1693, the grand jury dismissed more than half of the presentments; and, if it found bills against twenty-six, the trials did but show the feebleness of the testimony on which others had been condemned. The same testimony was produced, and there, at Salem, with Stoughton on the bench, verdicts of acquittal followed. "Error expired amidst its worshippers." Three had, for special reasons, been convicted one was : a wife, whose testimony had sent her husband to the gallows, and whose confession was now used against herself. All were at once reprieved, and soon set free.

Still reluctant to yield, the party of superstition were resolved on one conviction. The victim selected was Sarah Daston, a woman of eighty years old, who for twenty years had enjoyed the undisputed reputation of a witch: if ever there were a witch in the world, she, it was said, was one. In the presence of a throng, the trial went forward at Charlestown: there was more evidence against her than against any at Salem; but the common mind was disinthralled, and asserted itself, through the jury, by a verdict of acquittal.

To cover his confusion, Cotton Mather got up a case of witchcraft in his own parish. The imposture was promptly exposed to ridicule by the unlettered but rational and intelligent Robert Calef. Public opinion, also, asserted its power. The inexorable indignation of the people of Salem village drove Parris from the place. Noyes made a full confession, asking forgiveness always, and consecrating the remainder of his life to deeds of mercy. Sewail, one of the judges, by the frankness and sincerity of his undisguised confession, recovered public esteem. Stoughton and Cotton Mather never repented. The former lived proud, unsatisfied, and unbeloved; the latter attempted to persuade

others and himself that he had not been specially active in the tragedy. But the public mind would not be deceived. His diary proves that he did not wholly escape the rising impeachment from the monitor within; and Cotton Mather, who had sought the foundation of faith in tales of wonders, himself "had temptations to atheism, and to the abandonment of all religion as a mere delusion."

The common mind of Massachusetts was more wise. It never wavered in its faith; more ready to receive every tale from the invisible world, than to gaze on the universe without acknowledging an Infinite Intelligence. Rejecting superstition as tending to cowardice and submission, cherishing religion as the source of courage and the fountain of freedom, the common mind in New England refused henceforward to separate belief and reason. To the west of Massachusetts, and to Connecticut, to which the influence of Cotton Mather and its consequences did not extend, we must look for the unmixed development of the essential character of New England; yet there, also, faith and "common sense were reconciled.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

RELATION OF AMERICAN COLONIES TO EUROPE.

THE people in the charter governments could hope from England for no concession of larger liberties. Instead, therefore, of looking for the reign of absolute right, they were led to reverence the forms of their privileges as exempt from change. We hear no more of the theocracy where God was alone supreme lawgiver and king; no more of the expected triumph of freedom and justice anticipated "in the second coming of Christ:" liberty was defended by asserting the sanctity of com

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pact. But the political morality of England did not recognize the sanctity of the compacts with colonies. It regarded "the regulation of charters as part of the public economy."

Parliament had made itself supreme by electing monarchs and a dynasty for the British dominions. Its legislative power was, in general terms, unquestioned in England even by American agents, and was by itself interpreted to extend over all the colonies, with no limitation but its own pleasure. It was "absolute and

unaccountable."

The direct taxation of America for the benefit of the English treasury, was, at that time, not dreamed of. That the respective colonies should contribute to the common defence against the French and Indians, was desired in America- was earnestly enjoined from England; but the demand for quotas was directed to the colonies themselves, and was refused or granted by the colonial assemblies, as their own policy prompted. The want of concert, and the refusal of contributions, readily suggested the interference of parliament, but the proposition seems to have remained unnoticed. The institution of a general post-office was valued as a convenience, not dreaded as a tax. The colonial legislatures had their own budgets; and financial questions - Shall the grants be generally for the use of the crown, or carefully limited for specific purposes? Shall the moneys levied be confided to an officer of royal appointment, or to a treasurer responsible to the legis lature? Shall the revenue be granted permanently, or from year to year? Shall the salaries of the royal judges and the royal governor be fixed, or depend annually on the popular contentment? These were

arose

questions consistent with the relations between metropolis and colony; but the supreme power of parliament to tax at its discretion, was not yet maintained in England-was always denied in America.

The colonial press, in spite of royal instructions, was