USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 25
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was desirable continually changed. Most families, indeed, enforced these restrictions from private religious reasons, not from obedience to law; it was precisely because they did so that they enacted the law. As to the terms of the above bogus statute, it is divisible into two parts. The first clause, though stated too unqualifiedly,-unnecessary travel being prohibited, -- may be allowed to pass. Most travel certainly was prohibited, and the law is on the statute book still; nor have the people ever been willing wholly to surrender this bludgeon over the heads of disorderly crowds or greedy cor- porations. A few years ago the farmers in the suburbs of New Haven tried to enforce it, to prevent city swarms from plundering and breaking down their fruit trees; and re- ceived much vicious abuse for their "blue-law fanaticism," from people who took no pains to discover the facts. The other items are merely burlesque fantasias on the theme of "unnecessary work" forbidden on the Sabbath. A law might just as well have been added for the election of magistrates to hide under the beds or behind the doors of each house, to ascertain what was done inside the four walls. The "unneces- sary work" would be indictable today, and in some places is specifically forbidden : if a cobbler set up his equipment in his front yard on Sundays, he would not be allowed to work there long. In a word, people must not make their work a nuisance to those who wish to observe the Sabbath. The classes of work noted by Peters were always-except shaving, perhaps-considered unnecessary by New England families : cold food injured no one, and gave the overworked women a breath; the beds could be made after six o'clock; sweep- ing need not be done at all for one day, and again favored the women; and cutting hair never was indispensable for any one on any day. But the abstinence was of people's own mo-
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tion, not statutory. It will be time to suppose that even fussy church officials, desirous of magnifying themselves, disci- plined offenders for these things, or indicted them civilly, when some record is found of such discipline or trial.
20. "No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day." The grave defense for Peters is made, re- garding this outrageous "whappernocker," that Dr. Burnaby says in his "Travels" that Boston people "of credit" told him that an English naval captain was arrested and whipped for publicly kissing his wife on Sunday after returning from a cruise. It is not the first time that English travelers have been hoaxed by Americans, and swallowed the information whole, without exercising any reasoning faculty upon it; but an American scholar should hardly seem to imply-what of course he does not mean-that the story may possibly be true. His American sense of humor should be a guaranty against that. It is also adduced that a New London couple were indicted in 1670 for sitting together under a tree in an or- chard on Sunday. Before accepting the parallel, it would be necessary to be sure what the couple were doing under the tree ; but possibly the New London recorders were restrained by delicacies not felt by the New Haven clerks. It seems to be a postulate that our ancestors cannot have done anything which was not ridiculous. And Peters was not an English- man; nor does he even say that the woman must not kiss the child publicly. Again, what magistrates were deputed to watch the cradle? It is simply impossible to believe that Peters believed this piece of rubbish himself. He was, in street phrase, "kidding" the English.
21. "The Sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday." There does not seem anything very atrocious in this, which was a mere convenience for farm work, and observed where
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there was no law. If a Sabbath was to be kept at all, it was no heinous offense against liberty to define its limits, follow- ing old Biblical and ecclesiastical custom. As before said, the Sabbath itself is the real grievance.
22. "To pick an ear of corn growing in a neighbor's gar- dent shall be deemed theft." "Rob any orchard or garden" are the words of the statute. It would be a remarkable statute which specified that robbing orchards or gardens should not be legally theft. Peters, as before, takes the ex- tremest case of petty annoyance which a malicious curmud- geon could inflict on a boy, and makes it into an entire statu- tory provision by itself. Many fruit and vegetable growers even today are longing for a public sentiment which will en- able them to enforce the statute more severely against youth- ful plunderers ; and at a time when these products constituted a large part of most men's income, what was there "blue" in passing laws against robbery of them ?
23. "A person accused of trespass in the night shall be judged guilty unless he clear himself by oath." A person ac- cused of burglary who refused to swear that he did not com- mit it, or one found in a neighbor's poultry yard who refused to swear that he was not there after chickens, would deserve any punishment on the statute books. To require a man un- der reasonable suspicion to deny his guilt does not seem on its face a very intolerable oppression. The avoidance of penalty is within the compass of the meanest.
24. "When it appears that an accused has confederates and he refuses to discover them, he may be racked." He might be, in Massachusetts, but there is not a particle of evi- dence that he ever was; while in England torture warrants were issued till just before the Civil War (the last in 1641). There is nothing of the sort on the New Haven code. Pe-
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ters was unaware that he was delivering a harder blow at old England that at New.
25. "No one shall buy or sell lands without permission of the selectmen." True in New Haven and Massachusetts, and entirely natural and useful. All private club-communi- ties, so to speak, many watering-places and beaches, have the same rules in essence, and for the same reason,-to make sure of the society, that the need or greed of a few may not make a bad neighborhood for all. Like other restrictions, it was found impossible to enforce, but it probably kept up a better standard of society while it lasted. A thoroughly occu- pied land like England merely had no occasion for it. Most real estate in England was entailed, and could not be sold at all.
26. "A drunkard shall have a master appointed by the selectmen, who are to debar him from the liberty of buying and selling." All communities have similar provisions, to put conservators over those who are unfit to care for them- selves, in the interest alike of humanity and social order, and to prevent the unfit person from becoming a charge on the community. It needs no defense, and why Peters thought it did is beyond guessing.
27. "Whoever publishes a lie to the prejudice of his neigh- bor shall sit in the stocks or be whipped 15 stripes." This is near enough to the truth, and there is nothing to be said against punishment for libel. We have disused the forms of punishment, but they were used in England too; and so long as they were, the assignment of them for false witness was not excessive. We have also transferred like actions from the criminal to the civil category; perhaps not with the best judgment.
28. "No Minister shall keep a school." The motive for
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this was doubtless the same as that for protecting ferrymen in their business : it was of the utmost importance to have schoolmasters, and in the thinly settled towns they could not make a living if the ministers were allowed to undercut them, which they could do as needing the pupils only to add to their income, while the schoolmaster had nothing else to live on. It was a Massachusetts law, not a New Haven one.
29. "Every ratable person who refuses to pay his propor- tion to the support of the Minister of the town or parish shall be fined by the Court 2 l. and 4 l. every quarter until he or she pay the rate to the Minister." That is, two pounds the first time and four pounds a quarter thereafter. This was a blunder of Peters' authority: the real statute was that the ratable inhabitants of a town were to meet and elect a min- ister, and in default of it, the selectmen were to be fined as above. In other words, a town was not to be allowed to lapse into heathenism from stinginess.
30. "Man-stealers shall suffer death." This was certainly not too severe a punishment for kidnapping on its deserts, though it may have been ill-judged; and the Rhode Island law which made it five years' imprisonment, with "satisfac- tion" to the parents,-whatever that may mean,-was far too lenient. 1
31. "Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the offender" at 300 l. estate." New Haven gave her magistrates discre- tion about prosecuting for improper wearing apparel. Mas- sachusetts specified many different things. Any one who sup- poses that New England has had a monopoly of, or been a rarity in, sumptuary legislation, has escaped much affliction by an enviable ignorance of history. It was a little later than
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its parent, because its economic condition was less developed in the seventeenth century.
32. "A debtor in prison swearing he has no estate, shall be let out and sold to make satisfaction." Not to be sold out of the United Colonies of New England, however. It does not appear that this was worse than leaving them to starve to death unless the public threw them pennies, as in England. Men who could not pay their debts otherwise were not thought badly treated in being required to work them out.
33. "Whoever sets a fire in the woods, and it burns a house, shall suffer death, and persons suspected of this crime shall be imprisoned without benefit of bail." This is a slov- enly blunder in attempting to condense a longer statement. The actual penalty was to pay the damage, and half as much to the county, provided his fire hurt corn between two speci- fied dates; the death penalty for deliberate arson was not ex- cessive, and is judged by many the proper one still. No death penalty was affixed in any New England colony except for such wanton arson.
34. "Whoever brings cards or dice into this Dominion shall pay a fine of 5 l." True of Massachusetts. We need not grieve over the long past ennui of the early Massachu- setts citizens, or their compulsion to make bone dice in order to gamble away their possessions. If the statute saved one per cent. of the evil it was intended to prevent, it was justi- fied. The founders were quite right to keep a gambling craze from starting in the new settlements. Dice and devils at once were too much to combat.
35. "No one shall read Common Prayer, keep Christmas or Saints' days, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, and jews' harp." The object of this huge jumble of fair truth
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and ridiculous falsehood is obvious from the connection of ideas. These were the "blue" laws par excellence; they were to prove that the Connecticut or New Haven Yankees were the legitimate brethren of the Covenanters and the Common- wealth's men,-sour, canting, boorish ascetics, who hated everything in the way of enjoyment, whether it were good food, good music, good literature, or jolly holidays. The disallowance of Common Prayer-not by statute but by in- direct methods-and of Christmas and saints' days (even so, forbidden only in Massachusetts), was part of the funda- mental attempt to maintain their own system, and prevent being undermined by the old one, or give their English ad- ministrative enemies a hold; it is wearisome to meet the disjecta membra of the same one fact at every turn, as new items of wrong or folly. Dancing was certainly banned, and has been in other societies since; possibly the old New Eng- landers knew their own young people better than we do. It would be easy to bring up evidence that the Puritans, of Old and New England alike, in their warfare for social decency, had better grounds than we are willing to admit. The times were not sentimental, passion was exceedingly primitive, and manners were decidedly coarse; perhaps mothers did not keep any stricter watch on their daughters than facts de- manded. Cards have been mentioned : they were only one of a number of gambling devices specifically forbidden. Pos- sibly the fun which the young men had was not less in quan- tity and wholesomer in quality. That cards are harmless now is not in point : they have ceased to be much used for gam- bling, and other amusements are plentier. Where Peters got his mince pies from is a mystery; but it is likely enough that some tradition may really have come down, of stiff Puritans who would not use articles closely associated with "papistic"
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festivals. It would be very characteristic of Peters to turn this into a statute. Every local or private prejudice of the dominant party was set down as a "Puritan law." This is apparently how the imaginary restriction of musical instru- ments finds its way into his imaginary New Haven statute book. The early settlers certainly were suspicious of the in- fluences of music, probably from the integral part it bore in the old Church services; and in the country districts, it had a long and stubborn resistance to overcome. That this was one of the greatest of their mistakes, and that the humaniz- ing influences of music would have been of immense value to them, while its inspiring ones would have helped and not hindered their spiritual life, seems certain. It is only another instance of how the wreckages of good things and evil go down together.
37. "When parents refuse their children convenient [suit- able ] marriages, the Magistrates shall determine the point." This was Massachusetts law. Peters must have meant Eng- lish parents to be horrified at the government interfering be- tween parents and children. Nothing is more significant of his rather reckless carping than that in No. 43 he makes a reproach of the very fact which this law was intended to mitigate,-the overweening parental authority which might spoil a daughter's life from unjust prejudice.
38. "The selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them away from their parents, and put them into better hands, at the expense of their parents." An excellent law : in substance, all the best modern communities have it. A drunken or lazy or brutal parent has no rights over his chil- dren that entitle him to keep them ignorant and untrained. If Peters thought otherwise, he was far below the level of his
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Puritan neighbors; if he did not, he would seem to have been playing on English prejudices for his own ends.
39. "Fornication shall be punished by compelling mar- riage, or as the court may think proper." That old societies have to give up in despair the regulation of the social evil, so long as it does not openly violate public decency, does not prove that newer ones may not check it somewhat. At any rate, as the offense could not be punished until it was known, it was evidently punishable as such infraction of good order if at all. And the punishment does not seem unfair; espe- cially as the court had discretion as to whether it was righteous to enforce it in any given case.
40. "Adultery shall be punished with death." This was general among all Puritan societies : the Long Parliament en- acted it in England. It is universally agreed now that the at- tempt to amend social morals by severe legislation is a fail- ure; but there was a vast amount of obtrusive criminality then which made the effort intelligible.
41. "A man that strikes his wife shall pay a fine of 10 l .; a woman that strikes her husband shall be punished as the court directs." Sufficiently near the truth : in fact, the statute (Massachusetts) gives the court discretion in either case, but the fine not to exceed £10. There is nothing to reprobate in efforts to make brawling couples keep the peace.
42. "A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband." There was no such statute, and it lay in the dis- cretion of the jury to accept the evidence as good or other- wise. There are arguments on both sides; Peters, however, apparently thought it mischievous, or expected the English to think it so.
43. "No man shall court a maid in person or by letter with- out first obtaining consent of her parents; 5 l. penalty for
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the first offense, 10 l. for the second, imprisonment for the third till released by the county court." This was true of New Haven, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The only rea- son it was not law in England also was because the unwritten law was so binding that no one dared disregard it; and any one who did, exposed himself to chastisement from the girl's entire family, if not worse. The law was believed to be in the interest of the girls as much as of their families, to pre- vent their deception by persons whom they had neither means nor capacity to estimate as justly as their parents. "Clarissa Harlowe" was written nearly a century after the Massachu- setts laws, and there a young lady's marriage is assumed as being entirely in the hands of her family. Much more than a century after that again, an English squire of good posi- tion entered his niece's bedroom one morning in his hunting gear, forced her to rise, and flogged her with his hunting whip, in her nightgown, for daring to receive the addresses of a man he disapproved. Peters must have been ignorant of English society to suppose this would strike them unfavor- ably.
44. "Married persons must live together or be impris- oned." This was not statutory, but at the discretion of the courts; which in all civilized countries have given decrees for the restitution of marital rights, or in other words, to make a married woman occupy the same house with her hus- band,-of course enforceable by some penalty. It was no specialty of New England. It is needless to say that the de- cree did not follow the couple beyond the front door.
45. "Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap." We know the Puritan dislike to long hair, as the badge of the gay young Cavaliers; and the bread bowl or a half pumpkin-shell was used often enough, but never by
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statute, and it is not likely Peters supposed it was. It is another phase of his purpose in No. 35.
In a word, many of the alleged enactments are unobjec- tionable in any community or age; many of the rest were rea- sonable in that age and under those circumstances; many were either inevitable incidents or sequents of the form of society attempted, or rational experiments in social order; some of them were in self-protection, to which they were driven by what they regarded as wanton aggression from out- siders; and several are grotesque travesties of the real laws, or extreme cases invented for ridicule. It is not too severe to call this "forgery," even although a concurrence of a fool for prosecutor, fools for a jury, and a fool for judge, might turn it into fact; but it would certainly be too harsh a judg- ment to call Peters a forger. He wrote in a spirit of jocular mischief quite as much as of malice, and cannot have sus- pected that he was writing for an earthly eternity.
Another remark is called for, but ought not to be called for. The social order of every time and place is constantly requiring local and temporary police regulations, explicable only by the local conditions and experiences, and justifiable by them; but which, if criticised without knowledge, seem examples of the silliest and sourest meddlesomeness. Many such rules and enforcements of our own day, if found on the Puritan statute-books (be it remembered, largely the police codes of small undeveloped communities) or records, would be hailed as proof positive of their hatred of innocent enjoy- ment, even of the affections. Only a few months ago, a couple were arrested and reprimanded for public kissing on a boat in Charles River, near Boston : will it be maintained that present-day Boston magistrates are averse to kissing ? On some beaches, men are prohibited from lying at full
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length; and one group of girls were intensely mortified at having a young masculine friend, who had flung himself on his elbow to talk to them, ordered by a policeman to sit up. A still more pertinent example is from Philadelphia, not re- puted fussy in these matters. When electric cars were first introduced, "trolley parties" were the craze for a time, and young people rode on them till all hours of the night, sing- ing or ostensibly singing at the top of their voices, and mak- ing night dismal for those who wished to sleep. A local or- dinance was finally passed to forbid this sort of pulmonary calisthenics. But imagine the comments of all classes if a law against public singing were found in the Connecticut or Massachusetts code !
Nor can the writer concur with the judgment that these things fairly represent the general spirit of New England life. They represent rather-a very different affair-the im- pression which would be produced on us of the twentieth cen- tury if we were compelled to return and live in the New Eng- land of the seventeenth. But in any section even of the English-speaking world of that age, we should probably be sickened with disgust or paralyzed with horror at the daily life around us; and how modern nerves could endure the Thirty Years' War and live, is not easy to conceive. For- tunately, each people is born into its own age and inured to the life of that age, as well as section ; and the sympathy cur- rently lavished on the early New Englanders for having to live in early New England is largely wasted. That the young fretted at the social order imposed by the old is not peculiar to Puritan society; and the most significant fact is that when their turn came to mold the new generation and its ways, they molded it not on the basis of revolt from their fathers' dull- ness, but on that of appreciation for their fathers' essentially
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sound and satisfying system, with the mitigations that new conditions made judicious. The boredom of childhood was not so vital an influence as to color their mature lives very deeply. As to the ultimate outcome of the system, it is not apparent that it was inferior to those which we should call more liberal; the roll of New England's children and its accomplished work would not gain largely by being ex- changed for that of any middle or southern colony.
For the daily life itself, it was very little disturbed by the criminal codes. Most people, then as now, did their work and enjoyed themselves as they could and chose, without stumbling over legal enactments; for those enactments repre- sented pretty much the way they liked to live, and were made by their own representatives for the very reason that such was the way they liked to live. It was their own ideal of a social system framed into law; and its penal enactments were to prevent that ideal being interfered with, not to pre- vent their leading it. Where it was over-strict, and annoyed a considerable part of the respectable population, as it doubt- less did in New Haven, it soon passed away with their own good-will: New Haven was overthrown as much by internal discontent as by outside force; probably indeed Connecticut never would have thought of attempting to extinguish it but for secret encouragement from within. As to the intimacies of private life, it does not seem that many girls remained un- married on account of their parents' contumacy, nor even were compelled to marry men they disliked,-in which they had the advantage over girls in England; and kisses or other endearments were not usually reserved for the market square and the frown of the constable. Very few remained on the wrong side of a river or went uneducated by reason of the ferry trust or the school trust; the muscles of the youth were
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not relaxed, nor their lungs tuberculous, because they could not have running races or blow horns outside a meeting- house when the minister was praying; no one was impover- ished because of prohibition from logging or haying on Sun- days; the Sunday continued to be mostly twenty-four hours long; and night prowlers had themselves to thank if their refusal to declare their innocent intentions landed them in jail. In short, the well-behaved were not much molested, and the ill-behaved suffered less, on the average, than in most other communities. It is doubtful whether the rank and file would have gained by exchanging their life for that of the ordinary English community. F. M.
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