emorable Providences'--Demoniacal Possession--Evidence
given before the Commission--Apologies issued by
Authority--Sudden Termination of the
Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators--The
Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution
on a large Scale in Christendom--Philosophers begin to
expose the Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster,
Becker, and others--Their Arguments could reach only the
Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only
partially Enfranchised--The Superstition continues to
prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in England
in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the
Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane Wenham in England in
1712--Maria Renata burned in Germany in 1749--La Cadiere in
France--Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases
of Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the
Extra-Christian World.

A review of the superstitions of witchcraft would be incomplete
without some notice of the Salem witches in New England.
An equally melancholy and mischievous access of fanatic
credulity, during the years 1688-1692, overwhelmed the colony of
Massachusetts with a multitude of demons and their human
accomplices; and the circumstances of the period were favourable
to the vigour of the delusion. In the beginning of their
colonisation the New Englanders were generally a united
community; they were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had
been thus infected they were too busily engaged in contending
against the difficulties and dangers of a perilous position to be
able to give much attention to differences in religious belief.
But soon the _purity_ of their faith was in danger of being
corrupted by heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most
numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political and
religious tyranny in England, and the dominant sect in North
America almost as severely oppressed Anabaptists and Quakers
in the colonies as they themselves, religious exiles from
ecclesiastical despotism, had suffered in the old world. They
proved themselves worthy followers of the persecutors of
Servetus. Other enemies from without also were active in seeking
the destruction of the true believers. Fierce wars and struggles
were continuously being waged with the surrounding savages, who
regarded the increasing prosperity and number of the int