These practical remarks are induced from a review of the life of Joseph Hewes whose father was one of the persecuted Quakers of New England and was compelled to fly from Connecticut in consequence of his religions tenets. A marked inconsistency has often been fearfully exemplified by those who have fled from religious persecution. The moment they obtained the reigns of power they have become the relentless persecutors of all who would not succumb to their authority and dogmatical dictation. In the biography of Charles Carroll the reader has one example. Under the administration of the Saybrook and Cambridge platforms a sterner policy was pursued towards the Quakers of New England than against the Roman Catholics of Maryland. Before these platforms were systematically dovetailed together the Baptist denomination was banished from the old settlements. Roger Williams came from Wales to Massachusetts in 1631 and preached the Baptist doctrine at Salem and Plymouth until 1636 when he and his flock were banished for their religious opinions. He and his adherents removed into the wilderness of Rhode Island and commenced the town of Providence. They formed the first church in New England where undisturbed freedom of conscience was enjoyed with a republican form of church government. The frame-work of the Cambridge platform was commenced by an ecclesiastical convention in 1646 and the superstructure completed in 1648. On this platform the municipal and legislative proceedings of Massachusetts were based for sixty years. In 1656 the legislature passed a law prohibiting any master of a vessel from bringing a Quaker into the Colony under a penalty of one hundred pounds. The next year a law was passed inflicting the most barbarous cruelties upon the members of this peace-loving sect--such as cutting off their ears, boring their tongues with a hot iron, unless they would desist from their mode of worship and doff their straight coats and ugly bonnets. In 1669 a law was passed banishing them on pain of death. Four of them who refused to go were executed. Some historians have had the effrontery to excuse this cruelty because the Quakers promulged their doctrines too boldly and thus provoked the Cambridge authorities. This sophistical apology is too far fetched. It shrinks from the mellow touch of charity and the fair scrutiny of justice. The cruelty admits of no palliation until we can convert the baser passions into virtues. By recurring to the bigotry and fanaticism of that period we can readily learn _why_ such a course was pursued. This affords no healing balm for the mind of a true philanthropist. We can only regret the past and rejoice that charity and liberty have so far triumphed in our now free and happy country as to dispel religious darkness and restore man to a degree of reason that has paralyzed persecution unto blood for opinion's sake--the brightest luminary in the constellation of a free government.