Their peculiar customs have the same tendency, for they teach them to value others, who are not of the society, by no higher standard than that by which they estimate themselves.  They neither pull off their hats, nor bow, nor scrape.  In their speech they abstain from the use of flattering words and of titles.  In their letters, they never subscribe themselves the humble servants of any one.  They never use, in short, any action or signature, which, serving as a mark of elevation to others, has any influence towards the degradation of themselves.

Their opinions also upon the supposed dignity of situations in life contribute towards the promotion of this independence of their minds.

They value no man, in the first place, on account of his earthly title.  They pay respect to magistrates, and to all the nobility of the land, in their capacity of legislators, whom the chief magistrate has appointed; but they believe that the mere letters in a schedule of parchment can give no more intrinsic worth to a person, than they possess themselves, and they think with Juvenal, that “the only true nobility is virtue.”  Hence titles, in the glare of which some people lose the dignity of their vision, have no magical effect upon Quakers.

They value no man again on account of the antiquity of his family exploits.  They believe, that there are people now living in low and obscure situations, whose ancestors performed in the childhood of history, when it was ignorant and incapable of perpetuating traditions, as great feats as those, which in its greater maturity it has recorded.  And as far as these exploits of antiquity may be such as were performed in wars, they would not be valued by them as ornaments to men, of whose worth they can only judge by their virtuous or their Christian character.

They value no man again on account of the antiquity of his ancestry.  Believing revelation to contain the best account of the rise of man, they consider all families as equally old in their origin, because they believe them to have sprung from the same two parents, as their common source.

But this independence of mind, which is said to belong to the Quakers, may be fostered again by other circumstances, some of which are peculiar to themselves.

Many men allow the independence of their minds to be broken by an acceptance of the honours offered to them by the governments, under which they live; but no Quaker could accept of any of the honours of the world.

Others allow the independence of their minds to be invaded by the acceptance of places and pensions from the same quarter.  But Quakers, generally speaking, are in a situation too independent in consequence of their industry, to need any support of this kind; and no Quaker could accept it on the terms on which it is usually given.

Others again suffer their opinions to be fettered by the authority of ecclesiastical dominion, but the Quakers have broken all such chains.  They depend upon no minister of the Gospel for their religion, nor do they consider the priesthood, as others do, as a distinct order of men.