I have already referred to the fact that we have right here among us in this city a very fair supply of a vulgar, dowdy kind of witchcraft. Other countries are favored in like manner. I have not just now the most recent information, but in the year 1857 and 1858, for instance, mobbing and prosecutions growing out of a popular belief in witchcraft were quite plentiful enough in various parts of Europe. No less than eight cases of the kind in England alone were reported during those two years. Among them was the actual murder of a woman as a witch by a mob in Shropshire; and an attack by another mob in Essex, upon a perfectly inoffensive person, on suspicion of having “bewitched” a scolding ill-conditioned girl, from which attack the mob was diverted with much difficulty, and thinking itself very unjustly treated. Some others of those cases show a singular quantity of credulity among people of respectability.
While therefore some of us may perhaps be justly thankful for safety from such horrible follies as these, still we can not properly feel very proud of the progress of humanity, since after not less than six thousand years of existence and eighteen hundred of revelation, so many believers in witchcraft still exist among the most civilized nations.
