Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/46

36 Bussaker was condemned for drunkenness to be whipped with twenty stripes well laid on. Robert Coles, for drunkenness committed at Roxbury, was condemned to be disfranchised, and to wear about his neck so that it would hang upon his outward garment a letter D, made of red cloth, and set upon white, to continue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time in public, under penalty of forty shillings for the first offense and five pounds for the second. Severity of punishments appeared only to aggravate the evil against which they were directed, for in 1648 the Court was forced to declare that "it is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is spent and much thereof is abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, with a blind perversity which is a remarkable instance of the fatuity which actuates people when they endeavor to accomplish the impossible, that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience.

Tobacco, for some cause or other, was especially obnoxious to the early colonial authorities of Massachusetts. The trade in the weed was only allowed to the old planters, but the sale or use of it was absolutely forbidden unless upon urgent occasion for the benefit of health and taken privately. It was also ordered that victualers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco to be taken into their houses, under penalty of five shillings for every offense, to be paid by the victualer, and twelvepence by the person who takes it. Further, it was ordered that no person should take tobacco publicly, under the penalty of two shillings sixpence, nor privately in his own house or in the house of another before strangers; and that two or more shall not take it together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offense.

It is true these laws against the use of tobacco are not so severe as some that have been enacted in other countries, but they were equally inefficacious. Thus, a Sultan of Turkey issued an edict to the effect that any one of his subjects detected in the act of smoking should for the first offense have his cheeks bored and transfixed by his pipe; for the second offense he was to have his nose cut off; and for the third he was to lose his head. Fines in the case of the New-Englanders, and mutilation and death in the case of the Turks, have not in the slightest degree prevented the use of tobacco; and that some recent laws to which I shall presently draw attention will prove equally futile there can be. no doubt.

In all these instances of sumptuary laws the ground has been