This tasty little volume is from Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The author is Richard P. Hallowell, merchant, of the gentle Quaker blood.
He shows how his ancestors were persecuted in New England, and how weak are the charges brought against the Friends to palliate those outrages. For their conscientious refusal to conform to certain outward rites, Quakers were hanged in Boston, and their women even whipped through the towns at the cart's tail,—a vignette of which proceeding adorns the cover.
Mr. Hallowell especially considers the case at Tiverton, in Rhode Island, where town officials were punished because they would not enforce obnoxious and unjust laws against their Quaker neighbors,—a grievance at last abated by the order of the King in Council.
Even if the Quakers had been much more fanatical, and guilty of grosser offences against social propriety than even their enemies averred, the persecution was abominable.
It does not detract from the interest of his book, that Mr. Hallowell incidentally gives a summary of the Life of Fox, and of the simple views which his followers hold. A brief Index also makes the work more valuable, especially as it is not divided into chapters.
