far from the morals of
the community being kept uncontaminated by this rigour, the very reverse
is the case--especially as respects the college students, who are in the
secret practice of more vice than is to be found in any other
establishment of the kind in the Union. But even if I had not been so
informed by creditable people, I should have decided in my own mind that
such was the case. Human nature is everywhere the same.

It may be interesting to make a few extracts from a copy of the records
and of the Blue laws which I have in my possession, as it will show that
if these laws were still in force how hard they would now bear upon the
American community. In the extracts from the records which follow I
have altered a word or two, so as to render them fitter for perusal, but
the sense remains the same:

"(13.) If any childe or children above sixteene yeares old, and of
suffitient understanding, shall curse or smite their naturall father or
mother, hee or they shall bee _put to death_; unless it can be
sufficiently testified that the parents have been very unchristianly
negligent in the education of such children, or so provoke them by
extreme and cruell correction that they have been forced thereunto to
preserve themselves from death, maiming.--Exo., xxi., 17. Levit., xx.
Ex., xxi., 15.

"(14.) If any man have a stubborne and rebellious sonne of sufficient
yeares and understanding, viz., sixteene yeares of age, which will not
obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that when
they have chastened him will not hearken unto them, then may his father
and mother, being his naturall parents, lay hold on him, and bring him
to the magistrates assembled in courte, and testifie unto them that
their sonne is stubborne and rebellious, and will not obey theire voice
and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes--such a sonne
shall bee _put to death_.--Deut., xxi, 20, 21.

"(_Lyinge_.) That every person of the age of discretion, which is
accounted fourteene yeares, who shall wittingly and willingly make, or
publish, any lye which may be pernicious to the publique weal, or
tending to the dammage or injury of any perticular person, to deceive
and abuse the people with false news or reportes, and the same duly
prooved in any courte, or before any one magistrate, who hath hereby
power granted to heare and determine all offences against this lawe,
such person shall bee fyned--for the first offen