ir strict, and, if you please, rigid ways, were the necessary
defences of their principles, which were just taking root here.
They did right in passing stringent laws to protect them; and
religious liberty was no more violated in doing so than is the
liberty of our town's people here, who, by the law of the State
protecting game, cannot take fish, or kill birds, during certain
seasons.

"Besides, I never saw any proof that Mr. Williams was himself the
great apostle of toleration. I remember reading to father, during
his sickness, some remarks of the late John Quincy Adams, in which
he vindicates the New England fathers for banishing Roger Williams
as a 'nuisance.'[3] Mr. Adams surely cannot be accused of bigotry,
nor of being an enemy to the cause of freedom; and his remarks
seemed to me more just than the eulogies, by historians and
orators, of Mr. Williams. Father once showed me an old book of Mr.
Williams's, which we have now, called 'George Fox digg'd out of his
Burrowes,' in which Mr. W. inveighs against the Quakers for their
want of 'civil respect,' and for using 'thee' and 'thou,' in
addressing magistrates and others. He says, on the two hundredth
page, 'I have therefore publickly declared myself, that a due and
moderate restraint and punishing of these incivilities (though
pretending conscience) is as far from persecution, properly so
called, as that it is a duty and command of God unto all mankinde,
first in families, and thence unto all mankinde societies.'--It is
also a matter of history that the colony settled by Mr. Williams
refused their franchise to Roman Catholics, though even then the
Roman Catholics of Maryland were tolerating people of his own
faith, and Quakers also. Mr. Williams always seemed to me like one
of our pious, zealous 'come-outers.' He even forsook his own
denomination in three months after he had been baptized, and for
forty years denied the validity of their sacraments, and the
scripturalness of their churches and ministry. Such a man would
even at this day be excommunicated by every society, unless it
were some association for the encouragement of radical notions of
liberty. I no more see in him the impersonation of religious
freedom, than in some other good people who go or stay where they
are not wanted. I