Note 23 — VII. Post-Offices—The Colonies.

That such scenes should have taken place here is not so strange, when we take into consideration the fact that all England was witch-mad, and the epidemic raged there subsequent to those atrocities which disgraced our colonial history. Even now the blush of shame reflects its hue on those pages devoted to witchcraft in New England, from the cheeks of those who cannot read our country’s history without referring to them. During the seventeenth century 40,000 persons are said to have been put to death for witchcraft in England alone. In Scotland the number was probably, in proportion to the population, much greater; for it is certain that even in the last forty years of the sixteenth century the executions were not fewer than 17,000. In 1643 the madness may be said to have reached its highest pitch; for in that year occurred the celebrated case of the Lancashire witches, in which eight innocent persons were deprived of their lives by the inherent falsehoods of a mischievous urchin. The civil war, far from suspending the prosecution, seemed to have redoubled it. In 1644-45 the infamous Matthew Hopkins was able to earn a livelihood by the profession of witch-finder, which he exercised, not indeed without occasional suspicion, but still with general success. And even twenty years later the delusion was still sanctioned by the most venerable name of the English law!