So the Quakers stayed out, not wishing to come in, but they had to pay tithes for support of the Established Church, whether they attended services or not. This arrangement still exists in America, only it has to be worked by indirection: instead of compelling everybody to pay for the support of the clergy, we reach the same point by allowing church property to be exempt from taxation. Persecution having ceased, the Quakers quit proselyting and therefore ceased to grow. But the traditions remained and the sentiment of friendship of man for man remained to fertilize that wonderful year, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, the year that man was really discovered. George Fox prepared the way for Susanna Wesley and her two great sons, John and Charles. George Fox believed and taught the equality of the sexes. He said that God's spirit might voice itself through a woman quite as readily as through a man; and it was with this thought in mind, and the example of the Quakers before her, that Susanna Wesley harkened to the Voice and spoke to the multitude. Later came little Elizabeth Fry, with a message for those in bonds, and also for those who had a fine faith in fetters, and a belief in chains and bars and gyves and the gentle ministry of the lash. The wisdom of the paid priesthood lies in the fact that it renders a large number of men useless for anything else. Seven years in college emasculates the man. His very helplessness then makes him clutch the Church with a death-grip. He is a sailor who can not swim. And these advocates, incapacitated by miscalled seminaries for alluseful endeavor, become defenders of the faith and prosecutors of all and each and any who fix their hearts on such simple and Godlike things as friendship and equality. Indeed, many of these advocates abjure the relationship of the sexes, tolerating woman only as a necessity, and as for themselves personally eschew her--or say they do. The Society of Friends being essentially a Religion of Humanity, and therefore divine, regards man as the equal of woman. John Bright was always a bit boastful that one of his maternal grandparents was a Jewess who forfeited the friendship of her family by eloping with a Quaker--there is a cross for you! Joseph Bright, the father of John Bright, never voluntarily paid church-tithes. Every year the bailiff came, demanded money, was courteously refused, and proceeded to levy on goods which were carried away, duly advertised and sold at auction. John Bright very early in life was delegated by his father to go and bid on the chattels levied upon, and this was his first introduction into business. For a time he himself paid church-tithes, but never without the protest, "I hereby pay this tax because I am obliged to; but entering my protest because I believe that this money is not to be used for either the glory of God or the benefit of man." Later, he went back to his father's plan and let the State levy.