It would appear perhaps incredible, that those infernal beings called witch-finders should ever have been tolerated and encouraged in any country calling itself christian and protestant, had we not seen characters no less detestable and diabolical countenanced, caressed, and patronised in such countries. The execrable reign of Charles II swarmed with _Spies_ and _informers_, whose talents were employed to promote religious uniformity, and suppress liberty of conscience. Like the witch finders, they were countenanced by the magistrates, patronized by the gentry, and enriched by the wages of unrighteousness, and the ruin of innocent persons and families. Our own time has seen such wretches, and poor Ireland has been not a little prolific of them. Even among our financial or revenue agents some of the same family have made their appearance, which some are apt to consider as an evil and a grievance of no small magnitude. If our own time has abounded with such characters, and if they have been really countenanced and cherished by rulers and magistrates, we must not be too severe upon our ancestors for the course which they pursued in regard to those called witches and witch-finders: for we do not seem to have yet gone so far beyond them in wisdom and virtue as we are sometimes apt to think. Among those called witch-finders, the first place seems due to _Matthew Hopkins_, of Maningtree, in Essex, who has been already mentioned, as invited here by the magistrates, to assist them in the discovery, or detection and conviction of witches, and the suppression of witchcraft. This man, as we are told, was witch-finder for the associated counties, (Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk,) and hanged in one year no less than _sixty_ reputed witches in his own county. The old, the ignorant, and the indigent; such as could neither plead their own cause nor hire an advocate; were the miserable victims of this wretch’s avarice and villany. He pretended to be a great critic in _special marks_; which were only moles, scorbutic spots, or warts, which frequently grew large and pendulous in old age, but were absurdly supposed to be teats to suckle imps. His ultimate method of proof was by tying together the thumbs and toes of the suspected person, about whose waist was fastened a cord, the ends of which were held, on the banks of a river, by two persons, in whose power it was to straighten or slacken it. _Swimming_, upon this experiment, was deemed a full proof of guilt; for which king James, (who is said to have recommended it, if he did not invent it,) assigned the following sage reason: “That as such persons have renounced their baptism by water, so the water refuses to receive them.” Sometimes those who were accused of diabolical practices were tied neck and heels and tossed into a pond. If they floated they were consequently guilty, and therefore taken out and burnt: if they were _innocent_ they were only _drowned_.