and it was but the other day that the English officers at the Cape were astonished that a similar conduct towards the Caffres produced a similar result. How lost are the most splendid deeds of the Christian philosopher on the ordinary statesman! But the Friends are a peaceable people, and "doing good they blush to find it fame." If they would make more noise in the world, and din their good deeds in its ears, they would be never the worse citizens. The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in America is annually celebrated in New England with great ceremony and eclat. It has been everywhere extolled by those holding similar religious views, and has been eulogised in poetry and prose. The landing of the Friends in Pennsylvania was a landing of the Pilgrim Fathers not less important: they went there under similar circumstances: they fled from persecution at home—a bitterer and more savage persecution even than befel the Puritans—to seek a home in the wilderness. They equalled the good Roger Williams in their justice to the Indians—they bought their lands of them—and they far exceeded him and his followers in their conception of the power of Christianity, and their practical demonstration of it. They are the only people in the history of the world that have gone into the midst of a fierce and armed race, and a race irritated with rigour too, without arms;[1] established a
- ↑ Missionaries, especially the Jesuits, and the English in the South Sea Islands, form the only exceptions, and these partially. The Jesuits, though they did not commonly bear arms, taught the use of them, and led, in fact, the most effective troops to battle in Paraguay. The South Sea missionaries form the strongest exceptions: they are, indeed, but guests, and not the governors; but, their conduct is admirable, and we may believe will not alter with power.
