Page:Mennonite Handbook of Information 1925.djvu/93

 "Our small Gift which we have given, we gave to the those who have the Power over us, that we may not offend them, as Christ taught us by the Tribute Penny. We heartily pray that God would govern all Hearts of our Rulers, be they high or low, to meditate those good Things which will pertain to OUR and THEIR Happiness."

"The above Declaration written by Benjamin Hershey, minister of the Menninist Church, and signed by a number of Elders and Teachers of the Society pf Mennonists and some of the German Baptists, presented to the Honorable House of Assembly, on the 7th day of November, was most graciously received."

Though the action of government authorities counseled the people against mob violence, so unpopular became the Mennonites in different sections of the country that numbers of them moved to the wilderness sections of Canada with their families, rather than to longer bear the taunts and jibes of unfriendly and hostile neighbors.

On page 143 of W. L. Grant's High School History of Canada, appears the statement that even after the close of the Revolutionary War and after peace had been declared between the British and the Americans, "An orgy of cruelty broke out in which men and women were imprisoned, whipped, tarred and feathered." As a consequence, more than 28,000 residents of the United States sought refuge in different parts of Canada. As many as 5,000 took up land in the fertile Niagara peninsula and other sections farther west in what is now Ontario. Among the latter were numbers of Mennonites who left comfortable homes in Pennsylvania and set their faces to the wilderness to go through the experiences of pioneer life over again. Though the change meant destitution, privation, and suffering, they longed