THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 



157 



after night in his barn, for the use of neighbors who might 

 be accused and might escape with his aid to New Hamp- 

 shire, to the honor of the venerable ex-governor Bradstreet, 

 of whom TJpham intimates that, had he remained governor 

 another year, the frenzy would never have gained head, 

 to the honor of his successor, Sir William Phips, who, 

 when Lady Phips began to be accused, looked into the 

 matter and cried a halt, all that can be charged off to the 

 advantage of the few who, earlier or later in the proceed- 

 ings discovered their dreadful error and in humiliation and 

 sincerity repented of what they had done, such as Judge 

 Sewall, Ann Putnam, the Rev. John Hale all these things 

 and the added plea that others elsewhere held the same 

 beliefs, that persons as guiltless suffered like enormities 

 in other places, before and since, under the malignant in- 

 fluence of this awful creed, all this does not wipe out the 

 appalling fact that right here in Salem at the hands of our 

 own ancestors whom we honestly revere and hold up as 

 better than their time in many ways, twenty innocent per- 

 sons, mostly women, were by their own neighbors done 

 to death, at intervals of weeks, with slow deliberation 

 and the forms of law, upon flimsy and unsubstantial state- 

 ments, the victims denied those rites and consolations of 

 religion which society affords to the most hardened of of- 

 fenders, excommunicated from the church they loved, out- 

 lawed of heaven and earth, even the poor solace of Christ- 

 ian burial denied their ashes. 



A phenomenon like this may well startle us from our 

 complacency and make us pause. 



It is for others to account for and explain it. The task 

 is not for me. Scholars learned in the research of the pe- 

 riod in question, familiar with its social atmosphere, and 

 initiated by virtue of long investigation into the mysteries 

 of its deluded thought, are here to address you to-night, 



