vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or
exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the
diseased and the cowards go.

Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes,
disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the
stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to
be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in
slavery.

But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would
question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the
government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty.
Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and
women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost,
she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to
Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for
their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were
crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and
young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being
of the superior class--that is, those who had the right to tax others.

Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of
concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will
surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in
England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in
danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant
concessions--unwillingly of course--concessions wrung from them. The
censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free
speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the
cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever
dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was
in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers
that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their
interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing
strong, but by making all others more liberal.

Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of
both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic,
complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had
absorbed the radicals, and th