acrificed
for their political heresies?

Where, then, is the difference in principle between our measures and those
you are so ready to condemn among the people I am treating of? There is
none; the difference is merely circumstantial. Thus we denounce, instead
of banishing--we libel, instead of scourging--we turn out of office,
instead of hanging--and where they burnt an offender in proper person, we
either tar and feather, or burn him in effigy--this political persecution
being, somehow or other, the grand palladium of our liberties, and an
incontrovertible proof that this is a free country!

But not withstanding the fervent zeal with which this holy war was
prosecuted against the whole race of unbelievers, we do not find that the
population of this new colony was in anywise hindered thereby; on the
contrary, they multiplied to a degree which would be incredible to any man
unacquainted with the marvelous fecundity of this growing country.

This amazing increase may, indeed, be partly ascribed to a singular custom
prevalent among them, commonly known by the name of bundling--a
superstitious rite observed by the young people of both sexes, with which
they usually terminated their festivities, and which was kept up with
religious strictness by the more bigoted part of the community. This
ceremony was likewise, in those primitive times, considered as an
indispensable preliminary to matrimony, their courtships commencing where
ours usually finish; by which means they acquired that intimate
acquaintance with each other's good qualities before marriage, which has
been pronounced by philosophers the sure basis of a happy union. Thus
early did this cunning and ingenious people display a shrewdness of making
a bargain which has ever since distinguished them, and a strict adherence
to the good old vulgar maxim about "buying a pig in a poke."

To this sagacious custom, therefore, do I chiefly attribute the
unparalleled increase of the Yanokie or Yankee race: for it is a certain
fact, well authenticated by court records and parish registers, that
wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number
of sturdy brats annually born unto the state, without the license of the
law or the benefit of clergy. Neither did the irregularity of their birth
operate in the least to their disparagement. On the contrary, they grew up
a long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race of whalers, wood-cutters, fishermen,
and pedlars, and stra