The people were dissatisfied with the new charter. They were becoming the victims of political jealousies, discontent, and animosities. They had been agitated by great revolutions. They were surrounded by alarming indications of change, and their ears were constantly assailed by rumors of war. Their minds were startled and confounded by the prevalence of prophecies and forebodings of dark and dismal[i.12] events. At this most unfortunate moment, and, as it were, to crown the whole and fill up the measure of their affliction and terror, it was their universal and sober belief, that the Evil One himself was, in a special manner, let loose, and permitted to descend upon them with unexampled fury. The people of Salem participated in their full share of the gloom and despondency that pervaded the province, and, in addition to that, had their own peculiar troubles and distresses. Within a short time, the town had lost almost all its venerable fathers and leading citizens, the men whose councils had governed and whose wisdom had guided them from the first years of the settlement of the place. Only those who are intimately acquainted with the condition of a community of simple manners and primitive feelings, such as were the early New-England settlements, can have an adequate conception of the degree to which the people were attached to their patriarchs, the extent of their dependence upon them, and the amount of the loss when they were removed. In the midst of this general distress and local gloom and depression, the great and awful tragedy, whose incidents, scenes, and characters I am to present, took place. [i.13] decoration PART FIRST. decoration [i.14] decoration SALEM VILLAGE. decoration [i.15] Salem Village, 1866. PART FIRST. SALEM VILLAGE. IT is necessary, before entering upon the subject of the witchcraft delusion, to give a particular and extended account of the immediate locality where it occurred, and of the community occupying it. This is demanded by justice to the parties concerned, and indispensable to a correct understanding of the transaction. No one, in truth, can rightly appreciate the character of the rural population of the towns first settled in Massachusetts, without tracing it to its origin, and taking into view the policy that regulated the colonization of the country at the start.