Here it may, again, be safely said, that if Increase and Cotton Mather had really, as the Reviewer affirms, been opposed to the _admission_ of spectral testimony, this was the time for them to have said so. If, at this crisis, they had "denounced it, as illegal, uncharitable and cruel," no more blood would have been shed. If the _Advice_ had even recommended, in the most moderate terms, its absolute exclusion from every stage of the proceedings, they would have come to an end. But it assumes its introduction, and only suggests "disbelief" of it, in avoiding to act upon it, in "some" instances.
Hutchinson states the conclusion of the matter, after quoting the whole document. "The Judges seem to have paid more regard to the last article of this _Return_, than to several which precede it; for the prosecutions were carried on with all possible vigor, and without that exquisite caution which is proposed."--_History_, ii., 54.
The _Advice_ was skilfully--it is not uncharitable to say--artfully drawn up. It has deceived the Reviewer into his statement that it was "very specific in excluding spectral testimony." A careless reader, or one whose eyes are blinded by a partisan purpose, may not see its real import. The paper is so worded as to mislead persons not conversant with the ideas and phraseology of that period. But it was considered by all the Judges, and the people in general, fully to endorse the proceedings in the trial of Bridget Bishop, and to advise their speedy and vigorous continuance. It was spectral testimony that overwhelmed her. It was the fatal element that wrought the conviction of every person put on trial, from first to last; as was fully proved, five months afterwards, when Sir William Phips, under circumstances I shall describe, bravely and peremptorily forbid, as the Ministers failed to do, the "trying," or even "committing," of any one, on the evidence of "the afflicted persons," which was wholly spectral. When thus, by his orders, it was utterly thrown out, the life of the prosecutions became, at once, extinct; and, as Mather says, the accused were cleared as fast as they were tried.--_Magnalia_, Book II., page 64.
The suggestion that caution was to be used in handling this species of evidence, and that it was to be received as affording grounds of "presumption," to be corroborated or reinforced by other evidence, practically was of no avail. If received, at all, in any stage, or under any name, it necessarily controlled every case. No amount of evidence, of other kinds, could counterbalance or stand against it: nothing was needed to give it full and fatal effect. It struck Court, Jury, and people, nay, even the Prisoners themselves, in many instances, with awe. It dispensed, as has been mentioned, with the presence of the accused, on the spot, where and when the crime was alleged to have been committed, or within miles or hundreds of miles of it. No reputation for virtue or piety could be pleaded against it. The doctrine which Cotton Mather proclaimed, on another occasion, that the Devil might appear as Angel of Light, completed the demolition of the securities of innocence. There was no difficulty in getting "other testimony" to give it effect. In the then state of the public mind, indiscriminately crediting every tale of slander and credulity, looking at every thing through the refracting and magnifying atmosphere of the blindest and wildest passions, it was easy to collect materials to add to the spectral evidence, thereby, according to the doctrine of the Ministers, to raise the "presumption," to the "conviction" of guilt. Even our Reviewer finds evidence to "substantiate" that, given against George Burroughs, resting on spectres, in his feats of strength, in some malignant neighborhood scandals, and in exaggerated forms of parish or personal animosities.