[74] October 17, 1711, the General Court passed an act reversing
“the several convictions, judgments, and attainders against the”
persons executed, and several who were condemned but not executed,
and declaring that to be null and void. In December of the same
year, £578. 12s. were appropriated to pay the damages sustained by
persons prosecuted for witchcraft in 1692. The act reversing the
attainder shows that the popular belief in the diabolical nature of
the witchcraft troubles had not abated twenty years after those events
transpired. The act is in _Records of Salem Witchcraft_, vol. ii. pp.
216-218. It commences thus: “Forasmuch as in the year of our Lord 1692,
two several towns within this Province were infested with a horrible
witchcraft, or possession of devils,” &c. “The influence and energy
of the evil spirits so great at that time acting in and upon those
who were the principal accusers and witnesses;” and that “some of the
principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions
have since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and
vicious conversation”—were the reasons assigned for the reversal of the
attainder.
As showing Gov. Hutchinson’s latest opinions on the question, whether
the manifestations at Salem village were wholly the result of fraud and
imposture, I append a supplementary paragraph with which he closes the
narrative in his final draft.
“The opinion which prevailed in New-England for many years after
this tragedy, that there was something preternatural in it, and that
it was not all the effect of fraud and imposture, proceeded from
the reluctance in human nature to reject errors once imbibed. As
the principal actors went off the stage this opinion was gradually
lessened; but perhaps it was owing to a respect to the memory of their
immediate ancestor, that many do not seem to be fully convinced. There
are a great number of persons who are willing to suppose the accusers
to have been under bodily disorders which affected their imaginations.
This is kind and charitable, but seems to be winking the truth out of
sight. A little attention must force conviction that the whole was
a scene of fraud and imposture begun by young girls, who at first,
perhaps, thought of nothing more than being pitied and indulged, and
continued by adult persons who were afraid of being accused themselves.
The one and the other, rather than confess their fraud, suffered the
lives of so many innocents to be taken away through the credulity of
judges and juries.”