'FROM the days of COTTON MATHER down to the present time, it has been the constant aim of the defenders of the reputation of the founders of New England, to cast upon the early Quakers all manner of aspersions. A few years since, a writer in the 'North-American Review,' having occasion to allude to the banishment of MARY FISHER and ANNE AUSTIN, the first Quakers who ever visited the western world, declared that it was for molesting and interrupting ministers in their places of worship. This assertion is also made by a clergyman of Philadelphia, in a discourse delivered on the anniversary of the landing of the 'Pilgrim Fathers;' with this addition, that one of these women went naked into a place of worship. THESE CHARGES ARE NOT TRUE. I do not believe the reviewer, nor the Doctor of Divinity (so called) wilfully misrepresented the truth; but I believe them culpable in taking for granted assertions of writers living long posterior to the events they describe, without examining for themselves the original documents remaining on the subject. The records of the Massachusetts Colony, as collected by HAZARD, as well as the narratives published at the time by the friends of the sufferers, conclusively show that neither MARY FISHER nor ANNE AUSTIN had ever set foot on the shores of New England until they were taken as prisoners from the vessel in which they came passengers, and carried to the jail of the colony. Deputy governor BELLINGHAM having received intelligence that two female Quakers were in the ship Swallow, then at anchor in the Bay, commanded that they should be closely confined therein, and that all their books should be taken from them, and burned by the hangman. A writer of that day, in reference to the person employed to effect this conflagration, quaintly remarks: 'O, learned and malicious cruelty!--as if another man had not been sufficient to have burnt a few harmless books, who, like their masters, can neither fight, strike, nor quarrel.' At that time there was no law against Quakers; but the council deemed that they were liable to the penalties of a law passed in 1646, against heresy and error, which decreed to banishment the opposers of the baptism of infants, and all such as denied the lawfulness of war. The order of council in this case is now before me, bearing date 'the 11th of July, 1656.' It commences with enumerating the former laws against heretics, and goes on to say, that, notwithstanding these, SIMON KEMPTHORN had brought in two Quakers, who, on examination, are found to hold very dangerous and heretical opinions, which they acknowledge they came purposely to propagate. It directs that the books of the prisoners shall be burned; that the prisoners themselves shall