Part 48

The present organization of the Quaker church is essentially democratic; every person born of Quaker parents is a member, and, together with those who have been admitted on their own request, is entitled to take part in the business assemblies of any meeting of which he or she is a member. The Society is organized as a series of subordinated meetings which recall to the mind the Presbyterian model. The "Preparative Meeting" usually consists of a single congregation; next in order comes the "Monthly Meeting," the executive body, usually embracing several Preparative Meetings called together, as its name indicates, monthly (in some cases less often); then the "Quarterly Meeting," embracing several Monthly Meetings; and lastly the "Yearly Meeting," embracing the whole of Great Britain (but not Ireland). After several yearly or "general" meetings had been held in different places at irregular intervals as need arose, the first of an uninterrupted series met in 1668. From that date until 1904 it was held in London. In 1905 it met in Leeds, and in 1908 in Birmingham. Its official title is "London Yearly Meeting." It is the legislative body of Friends in Great Britain. It considers questions of policy, and some of its sittings are conferences for the consideration of reports on religious, philanthropic, educational and social work which is carried on. Its sessions occupy a week in May of each year. Representatives are sent from each inferior to each superior meeting, but they have no precedence over others, and all Friends may attend any meeting and take part in any of which they are members. Formerly the system was double, the men and women meeting separately for their own appointed business. Of late years the meetings have been, for the most part, held jointly, with equal liberty for all men and women to state their opinions, and to serve on all committees and other appointments. The mode of conducting these meetings is noteworthy. A secretary or "clerk," as he is called, acts as chairman or president; there are no formal resolutions; and there is no voting or applause. The clerk ascertains what he considers to be the judgment of the assembly, and records it in a minute. The permanent standing committee of the Society is known as the "Meeting for Sufferings" (established in 1675), which took its rise in the days when the persecution of many Friends demanded the Christian care and material help of those who were able to give it. It is composed of representatives (men and women) sent by the quarterly meetings, and of all recorded Ministers and Elders. Its work is not confined to the interests of Friends; it is sensitive to the call of oppression and distress (e.g. a famine) in all parts of the world, it frequently raises large sums of money to alleviate the same, and intervenes, often successfully, and mostly without publicity, with those in authority who have the power to bring about an amelioration.

The offices known to the Quaker body are: (1) that of _minister_ (the term "office" is not strictly applicable, see above as to "recording"); (2) of _elder_, whose duty it is "to encourage and help young ministers, and advise others as they, in the wisdom of God, see occasion"; (3) of _overseer_, to whom is especially entrusted that duty of Christian care for and interest in one another which Quakers recognize as obligatory in all the members of a church. In most Monthly Meetings the care of the poor is committed to the overseers. These officers hold, from time to time, meetings separate from the general assemblies of the members, but the special organization for many years known as the Meeting of Ministers and Elders, reconstituted in 1876 as the Meeting on Ministry and Oversight, came to an end in 1906-1907.

This present form both of organization and of discipline has been reached only by a process of development. As early as 1652-1654 there is evidence of some slight organization for dealing with marriages, poor relief, "disorderly walkers," matters of arbitration, &c. The Quarterly or "General" meetings of the different counties seem to have been the first unions of separate congregations. In 1666 Fox established Monthly Meetings; in 1727 elders were first appointed; in 1752 overseers were added; and in 1737 the right of children of Quakers to be considered as members was fully recognized. Concerning the 18th century in general, see above.

Of late years the stringency of the Quaker discipline has been relaxed: the peculiarities of dress and language have been abandoned; marriage with a non-member or between two non-members is now possible at a Quaker meeting-house; and marriage elsewhere has ceased to involve exclusion from the body. Above all, many of its members have come to "the conviction, which is not new, but old, that the virtues which can be rewarded and the vices which can be punished by external discipline are not as a rule the virtues and the vices that make or mar the soul" (Hatch, _Bampton Lectures_, 81).

Philanthropic interests.

A genuine vein of philanthropy has always existed in the Quaker body. In nothing has this been more conspicuous than in the matter of slavery. George Fox and William Penn laboured to secure the religious teaching of slaves. As early as 1676 the assembly of Barbados passed "An Act to prevent the people called Quakers from bringing negroes to their meetings." On the attitude of Friends in America to slavery, see the section "Quakerism in America" (above). In 1783 the first petition to the House of Commons for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery went up from the Quakers; and in the long agitation which ensued the Society took a prominent part.

In 1798 Joseph Lancaster, himself a Friend, opened his first school for the education of the poor; and the cause of unsectarian religious education found in the Quakers steady support. They also took an

## active part in Sir Samuel Romilly's efforts to ameliorate the penal

code, in prison reform, with which the name of Elizabeth Fry (a Friend) is especially connected, and in the efforts to ameliorate the condition of lunatics in England (the Friends' Retreat at York, founded in 1792, was the earliest example in England of kindly treatment of the insane). It is noteworthy that Quaker efforts for the education of the poor and philanthropy in general, though they have always been Christian in character, have not been undertaken primarily for the purpose of bringing proselytes within the body, and have not done so to any great extent.

Education.

By means of the Adult Schools, Friends have been able to exercise a religious influence beyond the borders of their own Society. The movement began in Birmingham in 1845, in an attempt to help the loungers at street corners; reading and writing were the chief inducements offered. The schools are unsectarian in character and mainly democratic in government: the aim is to draw out what is best in men and to induce them to act for the help of their fellows. Whilst the work is essentially religious in character, a well-equipped school also caters for the social, intellectual and physical parts of a man's nature. Bible teaching is the central part of the school session: the lessons are mainly concerned with life's practical problems. The spirit of brotherliness which prevails is largely the secret of the success of the movement. At the end of 1909 there were in connexion with the "National Council of Adult-School Associations" 1818 "schools" for men with a membership of about 113,789; and 402 for women with a membership of about 27,000. The movement, which is no longer exclusively under the control of Friends, is rapidly becoming one of the chief means of bringing about a religious fellowship among a class which the organized churches have largely failed to reach. The effect of the work upon the Society itself may be summarized thus: some addition to membership; the creation of a sphere of usefulness for the younger and more active members; a general stirring of interest in social questions.[4]

A strong interest in Sunday schools for children preceded the Adult School movement. The earliest schools which are still existing were formed at Bristol, for boys in 1810 and for girls in the following year. Several isolated efforts were made earlier than this; it is evident that there was a school at Lothersdale near Skipton in 1800 "for the preservation of the youth of both sexes, and for their instruction in useful learning"; and another at Nottingham. Even earlier still were the Sunday and day schools in Rossendale, Lancashire, dating from 1793. At the end of 1909 there were in connexion with the Friends' First-Day School Association 240 schools with 2722 teachers and 25,215 scholars, very few of whom were the children of Friends. Not included in these figures are classes for children of members and "attenders," which are usually held before or during a portion of the time of the morning meeting for worship; in these distinctly denominational teaching is given. Monthly organ, _Teachers and Taught_.

Foreign missions.

A "provisional committee" of members of the Society of Friends was formed in 1865 to deal with offers of service in foreign lands. In 1868 this developed into the Friends' Foreign Mission Association, which now undertakes Missionary work in India (begun 1866), Madagascar (1867), Syria (1869), China (1886), Ceylon (1896). In 1909 the number of missionaries (including wives) was 113; organized churches, 194; members and adherents, 21,085; schools, 135; pupils, 7042; hospitals and dispensaries, 17; patients treated, 6865; subscriptions raised from Friends in Great Britain and Ireland, L26,689, besides L3245 received in the fields of work. Quarterly organ, _Our Missions_.

_Statistics of Quakerism._--At the close of 1909 there were 18,686 Quakers (the number includes children) in Great Britain; and "associates" and habitual "attenders" not in membership, 8586; number of congregations regularly meeting, 390. Ireland--members, 2528; habitual attenders not in membership, 402.

The central offices and reference library of the Society of Friends are situate at Devonshire House, Bishopsgate Without, London.

_Bibliography._--The writings of the early Friends are very numerous: the most noteworthy are the _Journals_ of George Fox and of Thomas Ellwood, both autobiographies, the _Apology_ and other works of Robert Barclay, and the works of Penn and Penington. Early in the 18th century William Sewel, a Dutch Quaker, wrote a history of the Society and published an English translation; modern (small) histories have been written by T. Edmund Harvey (_The Rise of the Quakers_) and by Mrs Emmott (_The Story of Quakerism_). _The Sufferings of the Quakers_ by Joseph Besse (1753) gives a detailed account of the persecution of the early Friends in England and America. An excellent portraiture of early Quakerism is given in William Tanner's _Lectures on Friends in Bristol and Somersetshire_. _The Book of Discipline_ in its successive printed editions from 1783 to 1906 contains the working rules of the organization, and also a compilation of testimonies borne by the Society at different periods, to important points of Christian truth, and often called forth by the special circumstances of the time. _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_ (London, 1876) by Robert Barclay, a descendant of the Apologist, contains much curious information about the Quakers. See also "Quaker" in the index to Masson's _Life of Milton_. Joseph Smith's _Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books_ (London, 1867) gives the information which its title promises; the same author has also published a catalogue of works hostile to Quakerism. For an exposition of Quakerism on its spiritual side many of the poems by Whittier may be referred to, also _Quaker Strongholds_ and _Light Arising_ by Caroline E. Stephen; _The Society of Friends, its Faith and Practice_, and other works by John Stephenson Rowntree, _A Dynamic Faith_ and other works by Rufus M. Jones; _Authority and the Light Within_ and other works by Edw. Grubb, and the series of "Swarthmore Lectures" as well as the histories above mentioned. Much valuable information will be found in _John Stephenson Rowntree: His Life and Work_ (1908). The history of the modern forward movement may be studied in _Essays and Addresses_ by John Wilhelm Rowntree, and in _Present Day Papers_ edited by him. The social life of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th is portrayed in _Records of a Quaker Family, the Richardsons of Cleveland_, by Mrs Boyce, and _The Diaries of Edward Pease, the Father of English Railways_, edited by Sir A. E. Pease. Other works which may usefully be consulted are the Journals of John Woolman, Stephen Grellet and Elizabeth Fry; also _The First Publishers of Truth_, a reprint of contemporary accounts of the rise of Quakerism in various districts. The periodicals issued (not officially) in connexion with the Quaker body are _The Friend_ (weekly), _The British Friend_ (monthly), _The Friends' Witness_, _The Friendly Messenger_, _The Friends' Fellowship Papers_, _The Friends' Quarterly Examiner_, _Journal of the Friends' Historical Society_. Officially issued: _The Book of Meetings_ and _The Friends' Year Book_. See also works mentioned at the close of sections on Adult Schools and on Quakerism in America, Scotland and Ireland, and elsewhere in this article; also FOX, GEORGE. (A. N. B.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] At the time referred to, and during the Commonwealth, the pulpits of the cathedrals and churches were occupied by Episcopalians of the Richard Baxter type, Presbyterians, Independents and a few Baptists. It is these, and not the clergy of the Church of England, who are continually referred to by George Fox as "priests."

[2] On the whole subject of preaching "after the priest had done," see Barclay's _Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_, ch. xii.

[3] Woolman's _Journal_ and _Works_ are remarkable. He had a vision of a political economy based not on selfishness but on love, not on desire but on self-denial.

[4] See _A History of the Adult School Movement_ by J. W. Rowntree and H. B. Binns. The organ of the movement is One and All, published monthly. See also _The Adult School Year Book_.

FRIES, ELIAS MAGNUS (1794-1878), Swedish botanist, was born at Femsjo, Smaland, on the 15th of August 1794. From his father, the pastor of the church at Femsjo, he early acquired an extensive knowledge of flowering plants. In 1811 he entered the university of Lund, where in 1814 he was elected docent of botany and in 1824 professor. In 1834 he became professor of practical economy at Upsala, and in 1844 and 1848 he represented the university of that city in the Rigsdag. On the death of Goran Wahlenberg (1780-1851) he was appointed professor of botany at Upsala, where he died on the 8th of February 1878. Fries was admitted a member of the Swedish Royal Academy in 1847, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1875.

As an author on the Cryptogamia he was in the first rank. He wrote _Novitiae florae Suecicae_ (1814 and 1823); _Observationes mycologicae_ (1815); _Flora Hollandica_ (1817-1818); _Systema mycologicum_ (1821-1829); _Systema orbis vegetabilis_, not completed (1825); _Elenchus fungorum_ (1828); _Lichenographia Europaea_ (1831); _Epicrisis systematis mycologici_ (1838; 2nd ed., or _Hymenomycetes Europaei_, 1874); _Summa vegetabilium Scandinaviae_ (1846); _Sveriges atliga och giftiga Svampar_, with coloured plates (1860); _Monographia hymenomycetum Suecicae_ (1863), with the _Icones hymenomycetum_, vol. i. (1867), and pt. i. vol. ii. (1877).

FRIES, JAKOB FRIEDRICH (1773-1843), German philosopher, was born at Barby, Saxony, on the 23rd of August 1773. Having studied theology in the academy of the Moravian brethren at Niesky, and philosophy at Leipzig and Jena, he travelled for some time, and in 1806 became professor of philosophy and elementary mathematics at Heidelberg. Though the progress of his psychological thought compelled him to abandon the positive theology of the Moravians, he always retained an appreciation of its spiritual or symbolic significance. His philosophical position with regard to his contemporaries he had already made clear in the critical work _Reinhold, Fichte und Schelling_ (1803; reprinted in 1824 as _Polemische Schriften_), and in the more systematic treatises _System der Philosophie als evidente Wissenschaft_ (1804), _Wissen, Glaube und Ahnung_ (1805, new ed. 1905). His most important treatise, the _Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft_ (2nd ed., 1828-1831), was an attempt to give a new foundation of psychological analysis to the critical theory of Kant. In 1811 appeared his _System der Logik_ (ed. 1819 and 1837), a very instructive work, and in 1814 _Julius und Evagoras_, a philosophical romance. In 1816 he was invited to Jena to fill the chair of theoretical philosophy (including mathematics and physics, and philosophy proper), and entered upon a crusade against the prevailing Romanticism. In politics he was a strong Liberal and Unionist, and did much to inspire the organization of the _Burschenschaft_. In 1816 he had published his views in a brochure, _Vom deutschen Bund und deutscher Staatsverfassung_, dedicated to "the youth of Germany," and his influence gave a powerful impetus to the agitation which led in 1819 to the issue of the Carlsbad Decrees by the representatives of the German governments. Karl Sand, the murderer of Kotzebue, was one of his pupils; and a letter of his, found on another student, warning the lad against participation in secret societies, was twisted by the suspicious authorities into evidence of his guilt. He was condemned by the Mainz Commission; the grand-duke of Weimar was compelled to deprive him of his professorship; and he was forbidden to lecture on philosophy. The grand-duke, however, continued to pay him his stipend, and in 1824 he was recalled to Jena as professor of mathematics and physics, receiving permission also to lecture on philosophy in his own rooms to a select number of students. Finally, in 1838, the unrestricted right of lecturing was restored to him. He died on the 10th of August 1843.

The most important of the many works written during his Jena professorate are the _Handbuch der praktischen Philosophie_ (1817-1832), the _Handbuch der psychischen Anthropologie_ (1820-1821, 2nd ed. 1837-1839), _Die mathematische Naturphilosophie_ (1822), _System der Metaphysik_ (1824), _Die Geschichte der Philosophie_ (1837-1840). Fries's point of view in philosophy may be described as a modified Kantianism, an attempt to reconcile the criticism of Kant and Jacobi's philosophy of belief. With Kant he regarded _Kritik_, or the critical investigation of the faculty of knowledge, as the essential preliminary to philosophy. But he differed from Kant both as regards the foundation for this criticism and as regards the metaphysical results yielded by it. Kant's analysis of knowledge had disclosed the a priori element as the necessary complement of the isolated a posteriori facts of experience. But it did not seem to Fries that Kant had with sufficient accuracy examined the mode in which we arrive at knowledge of this a priori element. According to him we only know these a priori principles through inner or psychical experience; they are not then to be regarded as transcendental factors of all experience, but as the necessary, constant elements discovered by us in our inner experience. Accordingly Fries, like the Scotch school, places psychology or analysis of consciousness at the foundation of philosophy, and called his criticism of knowledge an anthropological critique. A second point in which Fries differed from Kant is the view taken as to the relation between immediate and mediate cognitions. According to Fries, the understanding is purely the faculty of proof; it is in itself void; immediate certitude is the only source of knowledge. Reason contains principles which we cannot demonstrate, but which can be deduced, and are the proper objects of belief. In this view of reason Fries approximates to Jacobi rather than to Kant. His most original idea is the graduation of knowledge into knowing, belief and presentiment. We know phenomena, how the existence of things appears to us in nature; we believe in the true nature, the eternal essence of things (the good, the true, the beautiful); by means of presentiment (_Ahnung_) the intermediary between knowledge and belief, we recognize the supra-sensible in the sensible, the being in the phenomenon.

See E. L. Henke, _J. F. Fries_ (1867); C. Grapengiesser, _J. F. Fries, ein Gedenkblatt_ and _Kant's "Kritik der Vernunft" und deren Fortbildung durch J. F. Fries_ (1882); H. Strasosky, _J. F. Fries als Kritiker der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie_ (1891); articles in Ersch and Gruber's _Allgemeine Encyklopadie_ and _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_; J. E. Erdmann, _Hist. of Philos._ (Eng. trans., London, 1890), vol. ii. S 305.

FRIES, JOHN (c. 1764-1825), American insurgent leader, was born in Pennsylvania of "Dutch" (German) descent about 1764. As an itinerant auctioneer he became well acquainted with the Germans in the S.E. part of Pennsylvania. In July 1798, during the troubles between the United States and France, Congress levied a direct tax (on dwelling-houses, lands and slaves) of $2,000,000, of which Pennsylvania was called upon to contribute $237,000. There were very few slaves in the state, and the tax was accordingly assessed upon dwelling-houses and land, the value of the houses being determined by the number and size of the windows. The inquisitorial nature of the proceedings aroused strong opposition among the Germans, and many of them refused to pay. Fries, assuming leadership, organized an armed band of about sixty men, who marched about the country intimidating the assessors and encouraging the people to resist. At last the governor called out the militia (March 1799) and the leaders were arrested. Fries and two others were twice tried for treason (the second time before Samuel Chase) and were sentenced to be hanged, but they were pardoned by President Adams in April 1800, and a general amnesty was issued on 21st May. The affair is variously known as the "Fries Rebellion," the "Hot-Water Rebellion"--because hot water was used to drive assessors from houses--, and the "Home Tax Rebellion." Fries died in Philadelphia in 1825.

See T. Carpenter, _Two Trials of John Fries ... Taken in Shorthand_ (Philadelphia, 1800); the second volume of McMaster's _History of the United States_ (New York, 1883); and W. W. H. Davis, _The Fries Rebellion_ (Doylestown, Pa., 1899).