The sufferings of the Quakers ceased upon the accession of James II., who would willingly have purchased toleration for the true faith by granting it to all others. He favoured them also for the sake of one of their great leaders, whose father had been his personal friend. It is related of this king, whom the English themselves acknowledge to have been the best of his family, that when one of this sect was one day addressing him in the palace, with his hat on as usual, the king took off his own; upon which the Quaker observed that the king need not be uncovered on his account. "My friend," replied James, "you don't know the custom of this place;—only one hat at a time must be worn here."
That these people should have borne up against persecution is not wonderful.—There is a stubborn principle in human nature, which in a good cause is virtue, and even in an erroneous one is akin to it. Indeed without persecution, or at least without opposition, the enthusiasm of a sect cannot be kept up,—it is its food and fuel; and without it, it must starve and be extinguished. From the time of their legal recognition the enthusiasm of the Quakers ceased. No prophecies have since been uttered by them in the streets, no testimony borne in sackcloth and ashes; the Grand Turk has been abandoned to his misbelief, and the Pope, notwithstanding their concern for him, given up as irreclaimable. Yet such is the admirable œconomy of this extraordinary sect, that they continue to flourish, if not to spread.
So pure a system of democracy was never elsewhere exhibited as that of the internal government of this society. Each parish regulates its own affairs in a monthly meeting, each diocese or district in a quarterly one, the whole body in a yearly one, which is held in the metropolis.—Deputies go from the lesser to the larger assemblies; but every member of the society, who can conveniently, is expected to attend. The women have their meetings in like manner; the equality of the sexes in all things being practically acknowledged. In all other collective bodies the will of the majority is the law. The Quakers admit no such principle: among them nothing is determined upon unless it is the sense of the whole; and as the good of the whole is their only possible motive, (for no member of the society receives any emolument for discharging any office in it,) they never fail, whatever difference of opinion may at first have existed, to become unanimous.
Their preaching strikes a stranger as ludicrous. You may conceive what it must needs be, when the preacher imagines himself to be the organ of inspiration, and, instead of thinking what he shall say, watches for what he believes to be internally dictated to him. Nothing in fact can be more incoherent than their discourses, and their manifest inferiority to those of any other sect ought to convince them of the fallacy of the opinion upon which they proceed. That the admonition of the spirit, in other words the faculty of conscience, when it be wisely and earnestly cultivated, is an infallible guide of conduct, may and must be admitted; but that which will make a good man act well, will not always make him talk wisely. It is not however the matter of these discourses which impresses those who are disposed to be impressed: knowing the speaker to be seriously affected, they partake his feelings, and become seriously affected also. Their history affords a curious illustration of this. The mother of their chronicler was a Dutchwoman, who being moved, as she believed, by the Spirit, came to preach in England in the days of persecution. She understood no English, and therefore delivered herself through an interpreter. One day it happened that the interpreter was not at hand when the call came upon her, and the person who attempted to translate her meaning found that he could not understand her. The congregation, however, called upon her to proceed, affirming that the religious feeling which she impressed upon them could not be stronger if they had understood her. In the hands of a lying chronicler this would have been magnified into a gift of tongues. The story is not the less valuable, though it may provoke a smile.
The chief cause which exasperated the clergy so greatly against them, was their obstinate refusal to pay tithes, and this is now operating to diminish the sect. Could they be content to pay, and salve their consciences by protesting against it, all would go on smoothly; instead of this, they suffer their goods to be distrained and sold upon the spot; by which they sustain a loss themselves, and tempt others to profit fraudulently at their expense. The consequence is, that the Quakers have very generally forsaken the country and taken up their abode in cities. This is doubly detrimental to them. Those who remain in the country are left as insulated families, and zeal even more than gaiety requires the stimulus of fellowship. By their laws, anyone who marries out of the pale of the society is dismissed from it; but these families who live apart from their fellows are likely to fall off on this account for want of neighbourhood. They who are collected in cities, are lessened by another cause. Their principles exclude them from all professions except that of physic, in which few only can find employment; commerce therefore may be considered as their sole pursuit; their plain and moderate habits lessen expense, and their industry insures success; they grow rich, and their children desert the society. The children of the rich find its restraints irksome, and are converted—not by strong argument, not by incontrovertible authority, not by any honourable and worthy sense of duty, but by the pleasures of the card-table, the ballroom, and the theatre. But the great agents in converting young Quakers to the established Church of England are the tailors. The whole works of Bellarmine could not produce such an effect upon them as a pattern-book of forbidden cloths and buttons. Nor could any reason be urged to them so forcible as the propriety of appearing like other people, and conforming to the strict orthodoxy of fashion.
Odd as it may seem, this feeling has far more influence among the men than among the women of the society. The women who quit it usually desert for love, for which there is this good reason, that the Quakers have too much neglected the education of their sons. Women are easily converted in their youth; they make amends for this pliancy as they advance in life, and become the most useful diffusers of their own faith.
The diminution of the sect is not very manifest; and it is kept up by proselytes who silently drop in, for they no longer seek to make converts, and are even slow in admitting them. Perhaps these new members, if they are sufficiently numerous, may imperceptibly bring them nearer to the manners of the world in their appearance, and thus lessen the main cause of their decline.
LETTER LVIII.
Winter Weather.—Snow.—Christmas.—Old Customs gradually disused.