hat prevail in
it."

An aged and very worthy Friend in Philadelphia, named Robert Moore, who
deeply sympathized with the wrongs of colored people, wrote to Friend
Hopper as follows: "From 1822 to 1827, we had many interesting
conversations in thy little front room, respecting the distracted state
of our Society, and the efforts made to sustain our much beloved brother
Elias Hicks, against those who were anxious for his downfall and
excommunication. This great excitement grew hotter till the separation
in 1827; we not being able to endure any longer the intolerance of the
party in power. Well, it appears that the persecuted have now, in their
turn, become persecutors; and those who went through the fire aforetime
are devoted to pass through it again. But, my dear friend, I hope thou
and all who are doomed to suffer for conscience sake, will stand firm,
and not deviate one inch from what you believe to be your duty. They may
cast you out of the synagogue, which I fear has become so corrupt that a
seat among them has ceased to be an honor, or in any way desirable; but
you will pass through the furnace unscathed. Not a hair of your heads
will be singed."

The ecclesiastical proceedings in this case were kept pending more than
a year, I think; being carried from the Monthly Meeting to the
Quarterly, and thence to the Yearly Meeting. Thirty-six Friends were
appointed a committee in the Yearly Meeting. They had six sessions, and
finally reported that, after patient deliberation, they found eighteen
of their number in favor of confirming the decision of the Quarterly
Meeting; fifteen for reversing it; and three who declined giving any
judgment in the case. Upon this report, the Yearly Meeting confirmed the
decision of the inferior tribunals; and Isaac T. Hopper, James S.
Gibbons, and Charles Marriott were excommunicated; in Quaker phrase,
disowned.

I thus expressed myself at the time; and the lapse of ten years has not
changed my view of the case: Excommunication for _such_ causes will cut
off from the Society their truest, purest, and tenderest spirits. There
is Isaac T. Hopper, whose life has been one long chapter of benevolence,
an unblotted record of fair integrity. A man so exclusive in his
religious attachments that the principles of his Society are to his mind
identical with Christianity, and its minutest forms sacred from
innovation. A man whose name is first mentioned wherever Quakerism is
praised, or benevolence