ster.

The mention of the fact by Mr. Hale, already stated, that Cotton
Mather's book, _Memorable Providences_, was used as an authority by the
Judges at the Salem Trials, shows that the author of that work was
regarded by Hale as, to that extent at least, responsibly connected with
the prosecutions.

I pass over, for the present, the proceedings and writings of Robert
Calef.

After the lapse of a few years, a feeling, which had been slowly, but
steadily, rising among the people, that some general and public
acknowledgment ought to be made by all who had been engaged in the
proceedings of 1692, and especially by the authorities, of the wrongs
committed in that dark day, became too strong to be safely disregarded.
On the seventeenth of December, 1696, Stoughton, then acting as
Governor, issued a Proclamation, ordaining, in his name and that of the
Council and Assembly, a Public Fast, to be kept on the fourteenth of
January, to implore that the anger of God might be turned away, and His
hand, then stretched over the people in manifold judgments, lifted.
After referring to the particular calamities they were suffering and to
the many days that had been spent in solemn addresses to the throne of
mercy, it expresses a fear that something was still wanting to accompany
their supplications, and proceeds to refer, specially, to the witchcraft
tragedy. It was on the occasion of this Fast, that Judge Sewall acted
the part, in the public assembly of the old South Church, for which his
name will ever be held in dear and honored memory.

The public mind was, no doubt, gratified and much relieved, but not
satisfied, by this demonstration. The Proclamation did not, after all,
meet its demands. Upon careful examination and deliberate reflection, it
rather aggravated the prevalent feeling. Written, as was to be supposed,
by Stoughton, it could not represent a reaction in which he took no
part. It spoke of "mistakes on either hand," and used general forms,
"wherein we have done amiss, to do so no more." It endorsed in a new
utterance, the delusion, sheltering the proper agents of the mischief,
by ascribing it all to "Satan and his instruments, through the awful
judgment of God;" and no atonement for the injuries to the good name and
estates of the sufferers, not to speak of the lives that had been cut
off, was suggested. The conviction was only deepened, in all good minds,
that something more ought to be done. Mr. Hale, of Beverly, m