ctim of the merciless logic of his creed. He honestly
thought that every convert to Quakerism became by virtue of that
conversion a child of perdition; and, as the head of the Commonwealth,
responsible for the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of its
inhabitants, he felt it his duty to whip, banish, and hang heretics to
save his people from perilous heresy.

The extravagance of some of the early Quakers has been grossly
exaggerated. Their conduct will compare in this respect favorably with
that of the first Anabaptists and Independents; but it must be admitted
that many of them manifested a good deal of that wild enthusiasm which
has always been the result of persecution and the denial of the rights of
conscience and worship. Their pertinacious defiance of laws enacted
against them, and their fierce denunciations of priests and magistrates,
must have been particularly aggravating to a man as proud and high
tempered as John Endicott. He had that free-tongued neighbor of his,
Edward Wharton, smartly whipped at the cart-tail about once a month, but
it may be questioned whether the governor's ears did not suffer as much
under Wharton's biting sarcasm and "free speech" as the latter's back did
from the magisterial whip.

Time has proved that the Quakers had the best of the controversy; and
their descendants can well afford to forget and forgive an error which
the Puritan governor shared with the generation in which he lived.

WEST OSSIPEE, N. H., 14th 9th Month, 1878.

JOHN WINTHROP.

On the anniversary of his landing at Salem.

I see by the call of the Essex Institute that some probability is
suggested that I may furnish a poem for the occasion of its meeting at
The Willows on the 22d. I would be glad to make the implied probability
a fact, but I find it difficult to put my thoughts into metrical form,
and there will be little need of it, as I understand a lady of Essex
County, who adds to her modern culture and rare poetical gifts the best
spirit of her Puritan ancestry, has lent the interest of her verse to the
occasion.

It was a happy thought of the Institute to select for its first meeting
of the season the day and the place of the landing of the great and good
governor, and permit me to say, as thy father's old friend, that its
choice for orator, of the son of him whose genius, statesmanship, and
eloquence honored the place of his birth, has been equally happy. As I
look over the list of the ex