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326 strength as theirs need never have dreaded the power of this feeble folk, and that their institutions could never fall before an attack from any hands save those of the King himself, toward whom they now turned with an alarmed deprecation. The Puritan reign of terror for New England was over, its story to this generation seeming as incredible as it is shameful. Brutality is not quite dead even to-day, but there is cause for rejoicing that, for America at least, freedom of conscience can never again mean whipping, branding and torturing of unnamable sorts for tender women and even children. Puritan and Quaker have sunk old differences, but it is the Quaker who, while ignoring some phases of a past in which neither present as calm an expression to the world as should be the portion of the infallibility claimed tacitly by both sides, is still able to write:

"The mission of the Puritans was almost a complete failure. Their plan of government was repudiated, and was succeeded by more humane laws and wiser political arrangements. Their religion, though it long retained its hold in theory, was replaced by one less bigoted and superstitious. It is now a thing of the past, a mere tradition, an antiquated curiosity. The early Quakers, or some of them, in common with the Puritans, may illustrate some of the least attractive characteristics of their times; but they were abreast, if not in advance, of the foremost advocates of religious and civil freedom. They were more than advocates—they were the pioneers, who, by their heroic fortitude, patient suffering and persistent devotion, rescued the old Bay Colony from the jaws of the certain death to which the narrow and mistaken policy