64 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



regions the poorer, baptized Christians were being 

 murdered and scalped by the Indians or the French. 

 To be sure they did not cease to deprecate these grew- 

 some contrivances of jealous and land-hungry mon- 

 archs ; but they excused themselves on the ground that 

 the Brotherhood never waged war, and would the 

 rather suffer everything at the hands of an enemy insa- 

 tiable. How long a state could exist, composed entirely 

 of Quakers and therefore inimical to war, may be easily 

 imagined. Adjoining states must be Quakers as well 

 or the supposed state less rich than Quakers commonly 

 are. The leaders of the now free American states very 

 clearly perceived that by the virtues of Quakerism no 

 victories could be won : so, during the war the Brother- 

 hood was left in undisturbed inactivity, but was doubly 

 taxed. But the Quakers resisted payment of these 

 taxes because they regarded them as mediate contribu- 

 tions in the effecting of bloody designs for which they 

 professed an absolute hatred, but the results of which 

 were entirely to their liking. In the circumstances, a 

 part of the property of those refusing to pay was seized, 

 and sold below value in the name of the state. Event- 

 ually, most of them became amenable, if only to pre- 

 serve the appearance of the peace-loving and non-pay- 

 ing Quaker, and when the tax-gatherer came, (in 

 America the farmer does not seek him out), they fell 

 into a custom of laying a piece of gold on the table, 

 which could be taken for tax the part of conscience 

 or duty, perhaps also the part of wisdom. Those 

 Quakers within the compass of the royal English army 

 conducted themselves in like manner during the war. 

 They never gave a horse, or a wagon, or a servant, or 

 anything which might be demanded of them for the 



