dignity of her moral nature, and claims for her the equal culture and the free exercise of her endowments. Woman is man’s companion, according to the Quaker, in his intellectual and moral advancement; woman, as a human being, has equal rights with man.” All men, the Quaker argues, are equal; and he bows not down to his fellow-man, but to God alone, and says _thee_ and _thou_ to all, nor uncovers his head in token of obeisance to any. “George Fox declares,” says Bancroft, in his able summary of quakerism, “that he saw his doctrine in the pure openings of light without the help of any man. But the spirit that made to him the revelation was the invisible spirit of the age, rendered wise by tradition, and in a season of revolution excited by the enthusiasm of liberty and religion. There is a close analogy between the popular revolutions of France and England. In France the same symbols and principles reappeared, but more rapidly, and on a wider theatre. The elements of humanity are always the same. The inner light dawns upon every nation, and is the same in every age; and the French Revolution was a result of the same principles as these of George Fox gaining dominion over the mind of Europe. They are expressed in the burning and often profound eloquence of Rousseau; they reappear in the masculine philosophy of Kant. “Everywhere in Europe were the Quakers persecuted. In England, the general law against Dissenters, the statute against Papists, and special statutes against themselves, put them at the mercy of any malignant informer. They were hated by the church and by the Presbyterians, by the peers and by the king. During the Long Parliament, in the time of the protectorate, at the Restoration, in England, in New England, in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, everywhere; and for long wearisome years they were exposed to perpetual dangers and griefs. They were whipped, crowded in jails among felons, kept in dungeons foul and gloomy beyond imagination, fined, exiled, sold into colonial bondage. Imprisoned in winter without fire, they perished from frost. Some were victims to the barbarous cruelty of the jailor; twice George Fox narrowly escaped death. The despised people braved every danger to continue their assemblies. Hauled out by violence, they returned. When their meeting-houses were torn down, they gathered openly on the ruins. They would not be dissolved by armed men; and when their opposers took shovels to throw rubbish on them, they stood close together, ‘willing to have been buried alive, witnessing to the Lord.’ They were exceeding great sufferers for their profession, and in many cases fared worse than the worst of their race. They seemed, indeed, to be as poor sheep appointed to the slaughter, and as a people killed all day long, abused and suffering, who went forth weeping and sowed in tears.”