e or a flogging. In other places, the legislator,
entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which
he had himself upheld in Europe, renders attendance on divine service
compulsory, *w and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, **
and even with death, the Christians who chose to worship God according
to a ritual differing from his own. *x Sometimes indeed the zeal of his
enactments induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars:
thus a law is to be found in the same Code which prohibits the use
of tobacco. *y It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and
vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were
freely voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the
community were even more austere and more puritanical than the laws.
In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check the worldly
luxury of long hair. *z

[Footnote s: Code of 1650, p. 48. It seems sometimes to have happened
that the judges superadded these punishments to each other, as is seen
in a sentence pronounced in 1643 (p. 114, "New Haven Antiquities"), by
which Margaret Bedford, convicted of loose conduct, was condemned to be
whipped, and afterwards to marry Nicholas Jemmings, her accomplice.]

[Footnote t: "New Haven Antiquities," p. 104. See also "Hutchinson's
History," for several causes equally extraordinary.]

[Footnote u: Code of 1650, pp. 50, 57.]

[Footnote v: Ibid., p. 64.]

[Footnote w: Ibid., p. 44.]

[Footnote *: This was not peculiar to Connecticut. See, for instance,
the law which, on September 13, 1644, banished the Anabaptists from the
State of Massachusetts. ("Historical Collection of State Papers," vol.
i. p. 538.) See also the law against the Quakers, passed on October 14,
1656: "Whereas," says the preamble, "an accursed race of heretics called
Quakers has sprung up," etc. The clauses of the statute inflict a
heavy fine on all captains of ships who should import Quakers into
the country. The Quakers who may be found there shall be whipped and
imprisoned with hard labor. Those members of the sect who should defend
their opinions shall be first fined, then imprisoned, and finally driven
out of the province.--"Historical Collection of State Papers," vol. i.
p. 630.]

[Footnote x: By the penal law of Massachusetts, any Catholic priest who
should set foot in the colony after having been once driven out of it
was liable to capital punishment.]

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