History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... sweat and tedious labor of the husbandmen, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure, ease, and pastime of a small number of men, that the cart, the plough, the thresh, should be in inordinate severity laid upon nineteen parts of the land to feed the appetites of the twentieth, is far from the appointment of the great governor of the world." It is best the people be neither rich nor poor; for riches bring luxury, and luxury tyranny. The system aimed at a reformation of society, but only by means addressed to conscience. It demanded that children should be brought up, not in the pride of caste, still less by methods of violence. Life should never be taken for an offence against property, nor the person imprisoned for debt. And the same train of reasoning led to a protest against war. The Quaker, for himself, renounced the use of the sword; but, aware that the vices of society might entail danger on a nation not imbued with his principles, he did not absolutely deny to others the right of defence, while he hoped from the progress of civilization a universal and enduring peace. The Quaker regarded " the substance of things," and broke up ceremonies as the nests of superstition. Every Protestant refuses the rosary and the censer; the Quaker rejects common prayer, and his adoration of God is the free language of his soul. He remembers the sufferings of divine philanthropy, but uses neither wafer nor cup. He trains up his children to fear God, but never sprinkles them with baptismal water. He ceases from labor on the first day of the week, for the ease of creation, and not from reverence for a holy day. The Quaker is a pilgrim on earth, and life is the ship that bears him to the haven; he mourns in his...