early ages? Montesquieu himself has justly remarked, "that the most unexceptionable conduct, the purest morals, and the constant practice of every duty in life, are not a sufficient security against the suspicion of crimes like these." And yet, because, forsooth, there may be made to appear _examples seemingly attested_, and that on the faith of such an attestation the most absurd and cruel _prohibitory laws_ have been enacted by every _nation in the world, on the supposition of the possibility of such a crime_, however ignorant and brutalized by superstition these nations are or may have been, man is not only authorized by the Scriptures to persecute some poor miserable fool or vagrant impostor unto death, but he is sanctioned in founding this barbarous persecution on the laws of God! The mind sickens at such doctrines. It is grievous to find a man like our Addison sharing in such preposterous notions; notions which would induce a doubtful by-stander not to interfere with a mob of miscreants who were drowning some unfortunate old woman "for a witch." "There are," says Addison, "some opinions in which a man should stand _neuter_, without engaging his assent to one side or the other. It is with this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft. When I consider whether there are such persons in the world as those we call witches, my mind is divided between the two opposite opinions; or rather, to speak my thoughts freely, I believe in general that _there is_, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft, but, at the same time, can give no credit to any particular instance of it." Are we then still to believe that there may exist some supernatural hag, that can --------Untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches-------- Control the moon, make ebbs and flows, And deal in her command without her power? or who, with the influence given to them by our poet Rowe, By force of potent spells, of bloody characters, And conjurations horrible to hear, Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep, And set the ministers of hell to work, with the liver of a blaspheming Jew, the nose of a Turk, the lips of a Tartar, the finger of a birth-strangled babe, and ditch-delivered by a drab, &c. &c.? If we are to believe in witches with Blackstone and Addison, we must give credence to all these mystic means by which they _work_ their _way_. All these _means_ have been _seemingly attested_, and led, from the just horror they inspired, to those _prohibitory laws_ enacted by _every nation_; as if the laws of man could be of any avail in resisting the _admitted_ supernatural powers with which these witches, sorcerers, magicians, &c. must have been invested by the Deity to perform their terrific operations! If we deny this authority we are Manicheans. VENTRILOQUISM.