avoidable, when we examine Neal's book and
find that he quotes or refers to Calef, all along, without the slightest
question as to his credibility, receiving his statements and fully
recognizing his authority. Indeed, his references to Calef are about ten
to one oftener than to Mather. The attempt of Neal and Watts to smooth
the matter down, by saying that the former had been led to his
conclusions by "a comparison of several authors," could have given
little satisfaction to Mather, as the authors whom he chiefly refers to,
are Calef and Mather; and, comparing them with each other, he followed
Calef.

The impression thus held in England, even by Mather's friends and
correspondents, that he was unpleasantly connected with the Witchcraft
of 1692, has been uniformly experienced, on both sides of the water,
until this Reviewer's attempt to erase it from the minds of men.

Thomas Hutchinson was born in 1711, and brought up in the neighborhood
of the Mathers; finishing his collegiate course and taking his
Bachelor's degree at Harvard College, in 1727, a year before the death
of Cotton Mather. He had opportunities to form a correct judgment about
Salem Witchcraft and the chief actor in the proceedings, greater than
any man of his day; but his close family connection with the Mathers
imposed some restraint upon his expressions; not enough, however, to
justify the statement of the Reviewer that he does not mention the
"agency" of Cotton Mather in that transaction. There are several very
distinct references to Mather's "agency," in Hutchinson's account of the
transactions connected with Salem Witchcraft, some of which I have
cited. I ask to whom does the following passage refer?--_ii., 63._--"One
of the Ministers, who, in the time of it, was fully convinced that the
complaining persons were no impostors, and who vindicated his own
conduct and that of the Court, in a Narrative he published, remarks, not
long after, in his Diary, that many were of opinion that innocent blood
had been shed."

This shows that Hutchinson regarded Cotton Mather's agency in the light
in which I have represented it; that he considered him as wholly
committed to the then prevalent delusion; as acting a part that
identified him with the prosecutions; and that the Narrative he
published was a joint vindication of himself and the Court. Hutchinson
fastens the passage upon Mather, by the reference to the Diary; and
while he says that it contained a stateme