greedy for new teachings. The Quaker, therefore, soon participated
in the persecutions which prelacy thought due to liberal christianity.
But persecution of the Friend, was the Friend's best publication, for he
answered persecution, not by recantation, but by peaceful endurance.
Combative resistance, in religious differences, always gives the victor
a right, or at least, an excuse, to slay. But Quakerism, a system of
personal and religious independence and peace,--became slowly successful
by the _vis inertiae_ of passive resistance. All other sects were, more
or less, combative;--Quakerism was an obstinate rock, which stood, in
rooted firmness, amid a sea of strife:--the billows of faction raged
around it and broke on its granite surface, but they wasted
themselves--_not_ the rock! And this is a most important fact in the
history of Religion in its development of society. All other sects lost
caste, power or material, either by aggression or by fighting. But the
Quaker said to the Prelate, the Puritan, and the Catholic, you may annoy
us by public trials, by denial of justice, by misrepresentation, by
imprisonment, by persecution, by the stake,--yet we shall stand
immovable on two principles, which deny that God is glorified by
warfare--especially for opinion. Our principles are, equality and
peace--in the church and in the world. Equality is to make us humble and
good citizens. Peace is to convert this den of human tigers into a fold,
wherein by simply performing our duties to each other and to God, we may
prepare ourselves for the world of spirits. You can persecute--_we_ can
suffer. Who shall tire first? We will be victorious by the firmness that
bears your persecutions; and those very persecutions, while they publish
your shame, shall proclaim our principles as well as our endurance. They
knew, from the history of Charles 1st, that the worst thing to be done
with a bad king was to kill him; for, if the axe metamorphosed that
personage into a martyr, the prison could never extinguish the light of
truth in the doctrines of Quakerism![14]

* * * * *

You will pardon me, gentlemen, for having detained you so long in
discussing the foundation of Maryland. The planting of your own state is
familiar to you. It has been thoroughly treated in the writings of your
Proud, Watson, Gordon, Du Ponceau, Tyson, Fisher, Wharton, Reed,
Ingraham, Armstrong and many others. Can it be necessary for me to sa