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 idolatry were punished by burning to death. The Morton Code proclaimed that the object of punishment was to protect, not to revenge, society; that where possible it should contemplate the reformation, not the destruction, of the criminal; that savage and bloody punishments and tortures were brutalizing to the whole people and worthy of savage and heathen, not of civilized and Christian, people. No crime except murder and arson of a dwelling at night was to be punished with death, and that death in no form except hanging. Other crimes were to be punished in proportion to their enormity. The code was silent as to witchcraft, blasphemy, sorcery, and idolatry. Though the people wondered at so mild a code, they adopted it by a large majority. In the minority was the clergyman. Mild as he was, he thought it well to burn some people.

Foreseeing the danger to the colony from the savages armed with firearms, the Morton Code provided that any person convicted of furnishing to an Indian any firearm or gunpowder, or teaching any Indian the use of firearms, should suffer imprisonment at hard labor (in chains until a prison should be pro-