shall pay a fine of one pound. For the second offence he shall be disfranchised.

"No quaker, or dissenter from the established worship of this dominion, shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates, or any officer.

"No food and lodging shall be afforded to a quaker, adamite, or other heretic.

"If any person turns quaker he shall be banished, and not suffered to return on pain of death.

"No priest shall abide in this dominion. He shall be banished and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one

without a warrant.

"No one shall cross a river but with an authorized ferryman. "No one shall run of a sabbath day, or walk in his garden, or elsewhere, except reverently to and from church.

"No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep houses, cut hair, or shave on sabbath day.

"No woman shall kiss her child on the sabbath or fasting day.

"A person accused of trespass in the night, shall be judged guilty unless he clear himself by his oath.

"When it appears that an accomplice has confederates, and he refuses to discover them, he may be racked.

"No one shall buy or sell lands without permission of the select

men.

"A drunkard shall have a master appointed by the select men, who is to debar him the liberty of buying or selling.

"Whoever publishes a lie to the prejudice of his neighbour, shall sit in the stocks, or be whipped fifteen stripes.

"No minister shall keep a school.

"Man stealers shall suffer death.

"Whoever wears clothes trimmed with silver or bone lace above two shillings a yard shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the select men shall tax the offender at the rate of 300l. estate.

“A debtor in prison swearing he has no estate, shall be let out and sold to make satisfaction.

"Whoever sets fire to the woods and it burns a house, shall suffer death; and persons suspected of the crime shall be imprisoned without benefit of bail.

"Whoever brings cards or dice into this dominion shall pay a fine of 51.

"No one shall read common prayer, keep christmas or saint's day;

make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the drum, the trumpet, and the Jewsharp.

“When parents refuse their children suitable marriages, the magistrates shall determine the point.

"The select men, on finding children ignorant, may take them away from their parents and put them into better hands, at the expense of the parents.

"A man that strikes his wife shall pay a fine of 10l.; a woman that strikes her husband shall be punished as the court directs.

"A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband. “No man shall court a maid without first obtaining consent of her parents-51. penalty for the first offence-10l. for the second; and for the third, imprisonment during pleasure of the court.

"Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.

"Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap."

Such is the curious code which has made so much noise in the world. Like the laws of the Druids, which it resembles in other respects, it was never written, but was declared and interpreted by the select men, the judges, and the pastors of the different congregations. The reader will not fail of being struck with the extraordinary mixture of reason and absurdity, of liberality and bigotry, which it contains. While he admires the former, he is not hastily to charge the lawgivers of Connecticut with a more than ordinary portion of bigotry and superstition. Two centuries ago people were not exactly what they are now, when every man, however ignorant or stinted in his intellect, is qualified, at least in his own opinion, to make laws and direct the measures of government. These simple pilgrims doubtless cudgelled their brains full many a sleepless night to digest this code, however deficient, and broughtit to maturity with prodigious labour of cogitation. The true principles of rational liberty had just begun to dawn forth in the modern world, and as there were few newspapers to enlighten the people, they possessed in general but vague, indefinite, and fantastical ideas of freedom. Yet still even here we perceive some indications of that hardy spirit of independence which the old puritans of Queen Elizabeth's time planted in England, and which, being mellowed, chastised, and disciplined in the progress of human reason and knowledge, at length produced the mild and rational system of VOL. IV. New Series. 8

liberty which we now enjoy, and we trust long shall enjoy, notwithstanding the foretellings of a class of prophets who seem resolved to contribute to their fulfilment. Against every system of government complaints will arise; but it is sufficient for attaining all the happiness in the power of mere political institutions to bestow, that when the majority are aggrieved, they have the power to obtain redress and future security, without resorting to violence, but simply by the exercise of their constitutional privilege of suffrage.

Among the regulations contained in the system of laws which gave rise to these observations, there are several that we think entitled to our admiration. It would be difficult to find anywhere a better statute than that respecting drunkenness, or penalties more righteously denounced than those against the publisher of a lie. The sumptuary law against persons wearing "gold, silver, and bone lace," is, perhaps, the best calculated to repress the extravagance of beggarly vanity of any ever devised. The statute taking away ignorant children from parents who wilfully, and not from inability, neglect their duty, and obliging them to pay the expense of a suitable education, is liable, indeed, to many objections, but under proper regulations must have contributed greatly to the general dissemination of learning.

But the article which obliges "married people to live together or be imprisoned," is too much like the pleasant alternative of marrying or being hanged, to meet our entire approbation; neither do we think their mode of cropping the hair equal to that practised at this time. Touching the denunciation against minced pies, we must take leave to observe that they are not only orthodox pies, but also of great antiquity, as appears by the testimony of Olaus Wormius, Schoeffer, and other writers, who have dilated on the manner of the northern nations celebrating their holydays. Lastly, as admirers of an agreeable and soothing art, we cannot forbear protesting against the music of these rigid legislators. But most of these obnoxious statutes have, we believe, long since fallen into disuse, and the principal resemblance between this ancient code and the present charter of Connecticut, is observable in the prerogatives of the select men, which still subsist in all their ancient rigour. A man may be a native-born citizen and a freeholder, yet he is not permitted to vote for the most insignificant parish officer, unless the select men certify that he is

"of mature years, quiet and peaceable behaviour, a civil conversation, and forty shillings freehold, or forty pounds personal estate; if the select men of the town certify a person qualified in these respects, be is admitted a freeman on taking an oath of fidelity to the state." It will readily be perceived that this inquisitorial power must give the select men a vast influence in elections, and if our limits would permit, we think the steady political habits of this state might be traced very clearly to this prerogative, which enables the select men, if they are so inclined, to prevent almost any person they please from exercising the right of suffrage. The words quiet and peaceable behaviour, and civil conversation," are sufficiently elastic to be stretched so as to comprehend the whole general tenor of a man's conduct, or contracted to any particular instance of irregularity. This power may certainly be abused, but that it had not been complained of at the time our author wrote his history of Connecticut, we are assured expressly. Only two appeals had then been made from the decisions of the select men, and, if we recollect right, they were in both instances confirmed. Acquiescence in the acts of those in authority proceeds either from a conviction of their being just, or from despair that any opposition will be effectual. There is a kind of despotism under which the people are silent as the grave, not because they have no cause of complaint, but because they dare not complain, lest a new vial of wrath should be poured upon their heads. Wherever a people murmur very energetically, they are either free from any violent oppression, or they are on the eve of a revolution; for when the tongue, in a despotic government, once gets free, all the rest follows of course. It may, we think, be laid down as a political axiom, that under a tyrannical government there is much grievance and little complaint; and that in a free state, on the contrary, there is very little suffering, but a prodigious deal of cla

mour.

Much has been said of the severity of these venerable statutes called the Blue Laws; but we think part of that severity may be ascribed to the peculiar situation of the framers. Punishment, in order to be effectual, should be in some degree proportioned to the difficulty of apprehending the criminal; to the obstacles in the way of his conviction; and to the measure in which he is liable to be affected by that punishment. A slight penalty may

be sufficient to deter a man from the commission of a crime, provided the discovery and the infliction be certain. But if the chance of punishment be very remote and improbable, the degree of the penalty should be proportionably increased-the weapon should be keen that wounds at a distance.

Their religious dissensions caused the first colonists of Connecticut to separate into small parties very early, and seek new settlements remote from those who they considered their oppressors. Here, surrounded by Indian tribes, who inhabited the wide wilderness, or by almost impenetrable solitudes, escape was comparatively easy to the offender; and if he chanced to be taken, the defective mode of administering justice, as well as the close union which had attached the little band to each other, and had gradually been strengthened by dangers, must have afforded frequent opportunities of evading punishment. But even supposing the delinquent at last to be brought to conviction, it is to be considered that the honest pilgrims had been so well seasoned in England by stocks, imprisonments, bastinadoes, and other gentle applications for bringing back stray sheep to the fold, fashionable in those days, that they did not mind trifles.

Having concluded the historical part of his work, our author commences a geographical description of Connecticut, dividing it into three great sections. The first consisted of the kingdom of Sassacus, which comprehended the present counties of New London and Windham; the second of the kingdom of Quinnipiog, comprising the counties of New-Haven and Fairfield; and the third was composed of the counties of Hartford and Litchfield.* This last was the patrimony of the great Connecticote, who gave his name to the whole state, and was, if we may believe our author, a sort of Agamemnon, a "king of men," who had tributary kings under him, being, in fact, the only Indian emperor ever discovered in North America. The ancient limits of the state of Connecticut, the historian affirms, of right extended to the Hudson, and he complains bitterly of the encroachment of our ancestors, whom he calls the "sly New-Yorkers," a name which we will venture to say was never applied to them before or since. He maintains that these worthy Dutchmen cheated the sister state out of the whole of Long Island, which of right belonged to Con.

* Two new counties have since been formed in Connecticut, called Middlesex and Tolland.