A Quaker Prisoner in France (1756)

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE has a two-fold aim. Firstly, it sets out to give some notion of the reception and treatment accorded to William Reckitt, a Quaker who fell into French hands early in the Seven Years' War, and secondly, it attempts to show, in the light of Reckitt's experiences, to what extent the best-known French comments on the Quakers, those of Voltaire, represent an accurate picture of the Friends and of French reaction to them in the eighteenth century. Voltaire's references to the Quakers are numerous, ranging from the first four letters of the Lettres philosophiques (first published in England in 1733 and in France in 1734), which are entirely devoted to the sect, to quite important passages in the Essai sur les Mcurs (1756), the Traite' sur la Tolerance (1763), the Dictionnaire philosophique (1771-72) and the Histoire de 1'Etablissement du Christianisme (1776). It is of some interest to examine the picture which Voltaire gives of the Quakers for various reasons, not the least of which is that, tireless propagandist that he was, he undoubtedly uses the Quakers for his own ends just as, for example, in the Lettres philosophiques, he uses Shakespeare for his own ends, inserting into a translation of the To or not to be soliloquy from Hamlet such pieces of philosophe propaganda as an attack on the hypocrisy of nos pretres menteurs (Letter XVIII). Does he introduce similar distortions into his picture of the Quakers, whom he uses to further his case against the Catholic Church, against the waging of aggressive war, in favour of toleration, and so on? This propaganda use is apparent from the start, in the Lettres philosophiques, as well as in his later references to the Quakers. Perhaps the reference which would have been least acceptable to the Quakers themselves comes in the Essai sur les Mweurs, where Voltaire seeks to identify their standpoint with his own to the extent of making them mere deists: