This is certainly a very deplorable scene; and is made the more so, by the previous character which history has imposed on us, of the simplicity, integrity, and generous love of liberty of the Dalecarlians. For the children and their parents, we can feel nothing but unmingled pity. The case of the witches is different. That three hundred children should have been made the victims of this imaginary witchcraft, is doubtless a grievous calamity. And that a number of women should be found, so depraved and so barbarous, as by their incessant suggestions to have practised on the minds of these children, so as to have robbed them of their sober sense, to have frightened them into fits and disease, and made them believe the most odious impossibilities, argued a most degenerate character, and well merited severe reprobation, but not death. Add to which, many of those women may be believed innocent; otherwise, a great majority of those who were executed would not have died protesting their entire freedom from what was imputed to them. Some of the parents, no doubt from folly and ill-judgment, aided the alienation of mind in their children, which they afterward so deeply deplored, and gratified their senseless aversion to the old women, when they were themselves in many cases more the real authors of the evil than those who suffered.
The honest and serious reader is now recommended to pause, and, for a moment, reflect on the foregoing recital; for if ten thousand real devils had been let loose and turned out on the earth in a visible and bodily form, and had been permitted to do their worst against the human race, if such a thing had actually taken place, the evils inflicted by them would have been little compared to what has really taken place by men's believing in the existence of an invisible Devil, who never had a being but in the imagination of mortals. The destructive influence which has spread over the whole earth has brought to a premature grave thousands and tens of thousands of harmless beings, who have been charged with holding converse with this supposed enemy of God and man. Of all the crimes which have been committed on earth, to sin against Orthodox faith has been considered the worst; when, in fact, it is no sin at all. There is nothing immoral in it. To differ from any man, or from all men, about religion, cannot be a crime. It is the inherent right of every human being; and to rob him of that right is the worst of felony. But to punish a man with death in addition, is to unite robbery and murder. And what makes it worse is, that religious offenders are put to death without pity or mercy. Few, very few tears of compassion ever have fallen for them, where Christianity has been the prosecutor.