the severe liquor law now in force in Pennsylvania, it may
be of interest to recall an early enactment regulating the traffic. It
was provided in 1709, that "For preventing of disorders and the mischiefs
that may happen by multiplicity of public houses of entertainment, _Be
it enacted_, That no person or persons whatsoever, within this province,
shall hereafter have or keep any public inn, tavern, ale-house,
tippling-house or dram shop, victualling or public house of entertainment
in any county of this province, or in the City of Philadelphia, unless
such person or persons shall first be recommended by the justices in the
respective County Courts, and the said city, in their Quarter Sessions or
Court of Record for the said counties and cities respectively, to the
Lieutenant-Governor for the time being, for his license for so doing,
under the penalty of five pounds." Tavern keepers permitting disorder in
their places of entertainment were subject to revocation of license.

There was a marked disposition in those days to visit with severity
offences against morality, especially when the detected culprits were
females; though males were not spared when sufficient proof could be
brought of their guilt. A woman concealing the birth of a child, found
dead, and evidently born alive, was held to be guilty of murder, unless
she could prove that the death was not her doing. This unjust presumption
remained in force for many years, until, under the influence of kinder
and Christian sentiment, the law was changed, the burden of proof placed
upon the prosecution and the presumption of innocence extended to the
defendant. The penalty for violating the marriage obligation was the
lash; the letter "A" being branded on the forehead for the third offence.
A singular provision of law was that a married woman having a child when
her husband had been one year absent, should be punished as a criminal,
but to be exempt from punishment if she should prove that her husband had
been within the period stated "in some of the Queen's colonies or
plantations on this continent, between the easternmost parts of New
England and the southernmost parts of North Carolina."

The penalties inflicted on servants point in a remarkable manner to the
wonderful advance in the condition of menial and common laborers within
the past hundred years. Pennsylvania, in the treatment of the laborer,
was at least as lenient as any other colony, but the laws of the time