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come uneasy about them, and have relinquished them in their turn. These noble instances of the dereliction of gain, where it has interfered with principle, I feel it only Justice to mention in this place. It is a homage due to Quakerism; for genuine Quakerism will always produce such instances. No true Quaker will remain in any occupation which he believes it improper to pursue. And I hope, if there are Quakers who mix the sale of objectionable with that of the other articles of their trade, it is because they have entered into this mixed business without their usual portion of thought, or that the occupation itself has never come as an improper occupation before their minds.

Upon the whole, it must be stated, that it is wholly owing to the more than ordinary professions of the Quakers, as a religious body, that the charges in question have been exhibited against such individuals among them as have been found in particular trades. If other people had been found in the same callings, the same blemishes would not have been so apparent. And if others had been found in the same callings, and

it had been observed of these, that they had made all the beautiful regulations which I have shown the Quakers to have done on the subject of trade, these blemishes would have been removed from the usual range of the human vision. They would have been like spots in the sun's disk, which are hid from the observation of the human eye, because they are lost in the superior beauty of its blaze. But when the Quakers have been looked at solely as Quakers, or as men of high religious profession, these blemishes have become conspicuous. The moon, when it eclipses the sun, appears as a blemish in the body of that luminary. So a public departure from publicly professed principles will always be noticed, because it will be an excrescence or blemish too large and protuberant to be overlooked in the moral character.

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CHAP

CHAPTER V.

Settlement of differences-Quakers, when they dif fer, abstain from violence-No instance of a duel-George Fox protested against going to law, and recommended arbitration-Laws relative to arbitration-Account of an arbitra ion-society at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Quaker-principlesIts dissolution-Such societies might be usefully promoted.

MEN are so constituted by nature, and the mutual intercourse between them is such, that circumstances must unavoidably arise which will occasion differences. These differences will occasionally rouse the passions, and after all they will still be to be settled. The Quakers, like other men, have their differences. But you rarely see any disturbance of the temper on this account. rarely hear intemperate invectives. witness to no blows. If in the courts of law you have never seen their characters stained by convictions for a breach of the marriage-contract, or for the crime of adul

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tery, so neither have you seen them disgraced by convictions of brutal violence, or that most barbarous of all Gothic customs, the duel.

It is a lamentable fact, when we consider that we live in an age removed above eighteen hundred years from the first promulgation of Christianity, one of the great objects of which was to insist upon the subjugation of the passions, that our children should not have been better instructed, than that we should now have to behold men of apparently good education settling their disputes by an appeal to arms. It is difficult to conceive what preposterous principles can actuate men to induce them to such a mode of decision. Justice is the ultimate wish of every reasonable man in the termination of his casual differences with others. But in the determination of cases by the sword the injured man not unfrequently falls, while the aggressor sometimes adds to his offence, by making a widow, or an orphan, and by the murder of a fellow-creature. But it is possible the duellist may conceive that he adds to his reputation by decisions of this sanguinary nature. But surely he has no other

other reputation with good men than that of a weak, or a savage, or an infatuated creature; and if he fall, he is pitied by these on no other motive than that of his folly and of his crime. What philosopher can extol his courage, who, knowing the bondage of the mind while under the dominion of fashion, believes that more courage is necessary in refusing a challenge than in going into the field? What legislator can applaud his patriotism, when he sees him violate the laws of his country? What Chris-tian his religion, when he reflects on the relative duties of man, on the law of love and benevolence that should have guided him, on the principle that it is more noble to suffer than resist, and on the circumstance, that he that he may put himself into the doubly criminal situation of a murderer and a suicide by the same act?

George Fox, in his doctrine of the influence of the spirit as a divine teacher, and in that of the necessity of the subjugation of the passions, in order that the inward man might be in a fit state to receive its admonitions, left to the Society a system of education, which, if acted upon, could not fail

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