SALEM WITCHCRAFT: with an account of Salem Village, and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and kindred subjects. By CHARLES W. UPHAM. Boston. Wiggin & Lunt. 1867. 2 volumes.

This book gives us an elaborate history of the witchcraft delusions which had their seat principally in Salem Village, near the town of Salem, but which extended also to that town, and to several other places, in the years 1691-2. The author, long a resident and a minister in Salem, seems to have made a diligent and conscientious study of the subject, and has brought out far more exact and full information in regard to it than the public previously had before them.

The first volume of this work is devoted entirely to an explanation of the locality in which this delusion began, and sketches of the characters and circumstances of the principal persons concerned in it, the accusers, the accused, the witnesses and the judges. The account of these matters throws very important light upon the transactions following, and is indeed indispensable to a full understanding of them; and the statements, both biographical and historical, are lucidly made, and full of interest and instruction.

The results of the witchcraft delusion were indeed frightful. Twenty persons were murdered by hanging, and one was pressed to death with heavy weights; and while this process was slowly killing him, it was directed that he should have "no sustenance, save only on the first day three morsels of the worst bread, and on the second day three draughts of standing water that should be nearest to the prison door,” and these alternately his daily diet till he died, or till he pleaded to the false and abominable charges against him. How many days the process lasted in the case of Giles Corey is not known. Hundreds had been committed to jail, the health of many was utterly ruined by the hardships and privations suffered there, two certainly, and probably many others, had died in prison, and all, even those who were acquitted and admitted to be innocent, were obliged to pay all the charges of their commitment to prison and their maintenance there. Thus many families became utterly impoverished; and the amount of suffering in mind, body and estate, resulting from these scandalous charges, is not to be computed. When the whole proceeding was found to have been mischievous or malignant imposture, and all the prosecutions were stopped, one hundred and fifty were discharged who still remained in prison.

The first accusers in this terrible tragedy were certain mischievous children, nine, eleven, and twelve years of age, and several ignorant servantgirls of greater age. They had met for several months in the kitchen of Rev. Mr. Parris, practising palmistry, fortune-telling, and probably ventriloquism, and telling and hearing witch and ghost stories. They first attracted the attention of others by "strange actions, exclamations and contortions." After a while they pretended to be seized with spasms, and to suffer terrible tortures; and after having excited the astonishment and sympathy of those around by these manoeuvres, they proceeded to use the influence thus

obtained, by accusing those against whom they had some grudge, of being instruments and confederates of Satan to torment them.

Such charges, made by such persons, could have had little influence, if the persons most trusted for piety, wisdom and goodness in the community, had applied common sense to the decision of this matter. But, instead of this, certain ministers, Rev. Samuel Parris of Salem Village, Rev. Nicholas Noyes of Salem, and Rev. Cotton Mather of Boston, seemed to seize eagerly upon this opportunity to apply the old Hebrew laws against witchcraft, which their creed required them to believe divinely inspired. They therefore set themselves zealously to the encouragement of the accusers, received their charges with implicit confidence (even when afterwards they were directed against the purest and best men and women in the community,) made no attempt at cross-examination or comparison of the evidence of these mischievous children and servants, but brought all the terrors of authority in Church and State to bear upon all that were accused, persistently demanding a confession of their covenant with Satan, however excellent and unimpeachable their whole lives had been. Their persecution of the accused when confined in prison was so persistent and so terrible (especially that of Rev. Mr. Noyes, "whose peculiar function in these proceedings seems to have been to drive persons accused to make confession,") that many of them did confess having practised witchcraft, though every one afterwards retracted the confession, and it was finally apparent to all that all the charges had been false, and most of them malicious. Those who threw discredit upon the charge of witchcraft in general, or who impeached the character or testimony of any particular accuser, were sure to be themselves accused, and to be hunted down remorselessly by the Reverend patrons of the prosecution.

The magistrates, being of course church-members and fully under the influence of the clergy, followed their lead implicitly in all the proceedings. "They acted throughout in the character and spirit of prosecuting officers, put leading and ensnaring questions to the prisoners, adopted a brow-beating deportment towards them, and pursued them with undisguised hostility. They assumed their guilt from the first, and endeavored to force them to confess, treating them as obstinate culprits because they would not. Every kind of irregularity was permitted.” — pp. 354, 5.

Of Rev. Cotton Mather Mr. Upham says "He aspired to be considered the leading champion of the Church, and the most successful combatant against the Satanic powers. He seems to have longed for an opportunity to signalize himself in this particular kind of warfare; seized upon every occurrence that would admit of such a coloring as would represent it as the result of diabolical agency; circulated in his numerous publications as many tales of witchcraft as he could collect throughout New and Old England, and repeatedly endeavored to get up cases of the kind in Boston. There is some ground for suspicion that he was instrumental in originating the fanaticism in Salem; at any rate, he took a leading part in fomenting it. p. 366.

Finding that the first accusations (made in a spirit of childish mischief, or from curiosity to see how far they would be believed,) took such hold upon the community, and drew such flattering attention to themselves, the accusers went further, and not only testified against people against whom they had a spite, as witches, but made themselves the mouthpiece of any one who had enmity against another. Thus people in Ipswich, in Andover, in Boston and other distant places began to be accused; and as soon as any one was charged with this awful crime of partnership with Satan, every one turned in horror from him or her; friendships, family bonds and church alliances were broken, and unspeakable doubt, fear, suspicion and misery were brought into hundreds of innocent and excellent families. The storm committed such extensive and fearful ravages, even a clergyman being one of those accused and hanged, that the clergy in considerable numbers at last set themselves against it, and then the thing came to an end, the magistrates refusing to receive new cases of precisely the same sort of testimony upon which they had so long been imprisoning and hanging. The ministers of the vicinity might have stopped the whole proceeding at the beginning or in any stage of it, if they had only chosen to combine for that purpose.

The clerical author of this book, while frankly admitting the enormous evils wrought by the superstition and bigotry of his clerical brethren in former times, gives, with amusing and amazing unconsciousness, his authentication to the very basis of these errors the claim that the Bible is infallibly inspired of God. He is fluent about "revelation" "the word of God" — "the teachings of the Divine word "—and the reality and permanent influence of "the miraculous," - he urges in excuse for the religious teachers who were ringleaders and active promoters of the witchcraft murders, that "the authority of Scripture seemed to require them to pursue the course they adopted"—and he talks about their ignorance of "those enlarged and just principles of interpretation which we are taught at the present day to apply to the Sacred Writings."

"It was gravely argued, for instance, [he says] that there was nothing improbable in the idea that witches had the power, in virtue of their compact with the Devil, of riding aloft through the air, because it is recorded, in the history of our Lord's temptation, that Satan transported him in a similar manner to the pinnacle of the temple, and to the summit of an exceedingly high mountain. And Cotton Mather declares that, to his apprehension, the disclosures of the wonderful operations of the Devil, upon and through his subject, that were made in the course of the witchcraft prosecutions, had shed a marvellous light upon the Scriptures."

Mr. Upham considers this last named view of Scripture, and these inferences from it, "a perversion of the Sacred Writings." But these inferences, and the line of conduct in question, are the direct and legitimate effect of teaching that every portion of the Bible is infallible truth, the inspiration of God. The Old Testament does assume the reality of witchcraft; it does declare to the priest and the ruler, "Thou shalt not suffer a

witch to live." The New Testament does represent that Satan transported the body of Jesus through the air to distant places, and that he was in the habit of grievously tormenting the bodies of living men and women. And if Cotton Mather and his brethren had not all along been teaching that these statements were literal truth, and inspired truth, there would have been no foundation of credit for the tales of silly children and ignorant servant-girls against the best men and women in the community. These tales, wild and absurd as any lunacy, would at once have been ascribed to lunacy or to malicious mischief, had not the general teachings of the pulpit produced a belief in witchcraft as possible and real, and had not the clergy of the region made special efforts to confirm the belief in its reality.

C. K. W.

WOMAN'S WRONGS: A Counter Irritant. By GAIL HAMITON. Ticknor & Fields.

This book is designed as a "counter irritant" to one recently published by Rev. John Todd, in which he condescends to give the weaker sex some admonition and advice, occasionally bestowing a pat and a sugar-plum to make the dear ones feel that he means their good. The Rev. Dr. Pecksniff is treated as he deserves. Let Gail Hamilton alone for such work.

Our Author has the rare merit of seeing both sides of a question, and having maintained most valiantly the right of woman to Suffrage, she has the good sense to see and the fairness to allow, that the possession of the Ballot will avail but little for the purposes which it is expected will be accomplished by it. For the admission of woman to the polls will not change the character, but only the volume of the vote upon any given question. Patrick may bring Biddy his wife to counter-balance Mrs. Percy Howard, and if there is any advantage, it will be on the side of Patrick, as the Biddies will be more easily led en masse than the more cultivated Mrs. Howards.

Nor will female suffrage affect the question of female labor. For the prices of labor must follow the laws of trade, and with these voting has nothing to do. But could legislation regulate the wages of labor, is there any reason to suppose, our author inquires, that woman would be more disposed than men to pay higher wages to women! Every one who has traded much with women will join in her "I fear not."

Nor will the right to suffrage raise woman in the social scale. The intelligent, cultivated woman, stands no lower in her own eyes or in the eyes of men, because of her political disability. The frivolous and vain would not be elevated were the disability removed. The first does not need the ballot as an incentive to exertion and self-culture, and if the exciting questions of the times fail to arouse the apathy of the latter, it is to be feared that going to the polls would prove insufficient. "Mobs and rowdies have always voted, and are mobs and rowdies still." The suggestion of the fat offices which the possession of the ballot would open to women, Gail repels with an indignant "Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Our author has too much good sense to join in the hue and cry for Universal Suffrage. "I would have the ballot made a noble and desirable possession, a sign of sagacity, of ability, of work, something to be striven for, a guerdon, as well as a power." She proposes two tests for its restriction -the ability to read and write, and the possession of some, not much, property. We fear that these restrictions will hardly meet the necessities of the case. Our Puritan Fathers made church membership a requirement for admission to the polls, but alas, that seive proved too coarse to keep out all the chaff of humanity. But there is a certain moral earnestness, which in those days was thought to pertain to church membership, the possession of which in man or woman, black or white, old or young, can alone qualify them for the high and sacred functions of government.

The book before us has many wise and witty sayings upon matters pertaining to the woman question, which men and women will do well to read. We would especially commend it to the attention of those females, who, finding themselves in a tight place, are looking to the possession of the ballot as a means of their enlargement, in the meanwhile neglecting to make the efforts necessary thereto.

The women who aspire to stand in the places now filled by men, must be willing to pay the prices they pay, in hard, diligent, patient efforts. To them, as to men, the old law is still in force, "In the sweat of thy brow, thou shalt eat thy bread," and Providence will no more wink at the shirking of this law in the one sex, than in the other.

It is true that women have been restricted in the choice of employments, but the restrictions have been conventional, not legal. Customs have now changed, and the doors of many offices are thrown wide open to such women as have the ability, and will use the diligence necessary to fill them. In the various pursuits of business, literature, science and the arts, woman is at liberty to do just what she can do, and no hindrance from without will thwart the prosecution of the steady purpose.

We do not think that our female lecturers, novelists, and others, who have ventured out of the ruts of domestic life, have any reason to complain of their reception by the public. Anna Dickinson can draw a larger audience to her harangues upon the platform, than can Mr. Emerson to his rich and thoughtful discourse, and for them she demands and receives twice the pay.

Uncle Tom's Cabin had probably twenty readers, where the White Slave had one.

Let women then think less of their rights and wrongs, and more of their duties. It was necessary, perhaps, to call attention to these wrongs; but that has been done, and men seem disposed to do them justice. Let woman now be just to herself, and whether she throw the ballot or no, she will become a power in society and in the state.

A. S. W.