e Mrs. Hicks, and her little daughter
nine years of age, were executed on the scaffold at Huntingdon in
1716, for the suppositious offences of raising storms and selling
their souls to the devil.

With the judicial murder of this unfortunate mother and her innocent
daughter we close a long list of tragedies which disgraced England for
hundreds of years--which exhibits the ignorance and violence of past
ages. Dr. Sprenger estimates that nine million persons have been
burned or otherwise put to death as witches during the Christian
epoch. For such a dreadful waste of life Catholics and Protestants
were equally guilty. Any one who raised his voice on behalf of the
proscribed class, ran the risk of himself being accused of sorcery, or
at least of heresy. At last, in 1563, J. Weier, a physician in
Germany, spoke boldly against the belief in witchcraft. Twenty years
later, Reginald Scot, as already stated, wrote and spoke, not against
witches, but against the absurdity of believing that such persons
existed.

Happily, no longer can hysterical girls and malicious individuals give
false evidence in a court of law touching the feigned crime of
witchcraft; no longer can the witch-finder exert his skill; no longer
can judges and jury condemn to the flames or scaffold suspected
witches and wizards; and no longer can an ignorant people listen to
the despairing cries--cries which neither evoked pity nor secured
mercy--of victims of superstition expiring amidst blazing faggots. But
yet superstition lingers amongst us, as we shall show under the head
"Superstition in the Nineteenth Century."

CHAPTER LXVI.

Scotchmen and Englishmen in America--Superstition in
the Back Settlements--Witchcraft in New England--Rev.
Cotton Mather's View of Witchcraft--Judges and
Witnesses overawed by Witches--Men and Beasts
bewitched--Bewitched Persons prayed for--Preternatural
Diseases beyond Physicians' Skill--Trial of Susan
Martin--Absurd Evidence--Belief in the Existence of
Witchcraft--Witchcraft in Sweden--Commission of
Inquiry appointed--The Devil's Tyranny--Deluded
Children--Day of Humiliation appointed on account of
Witchcraft--Threescore and Ten Witches in a
Village--Children engaged in Witchery put to
Death--How Witches were conveyed from place to
place--Girl healed by the Devil--The Devil bound with
an Iron Chain--An Angel's Warning Voice--Ang