legislation of the colony of Massachusetts, though doubtless many
things which were then considered sins would now be regarded
as crimes, such as bigamy, for instance. The distinction is,
nevertheless, a valid one, and we shall have occasion frequently to
refer to it. We shall find that the defect of much of our modern
legislation--prohibition laws, for instance--is that they attempt to
treat as crimes, as offences against the state, matters which are
merely sins, offences against the conscience or the individual who
commits them.

To-day, the American constitutions all say that a militia is the
natural defence of a state of free men. It is interesting; therefore,
to find, hardly a century after the Norman Conquest. In 1181, the
Assize of Arms, which revived the ancient Saxon "Fyrd," the word for
what we now call militia; and, twenty years before that, "scutage"
replaced military service. To the burdens of the feudal system,
compulsory military service and standing armies, our ancestors
objected from the very beginning. In a sense, scutage was the
beginning of taxation; but it was only a commutation for military
service, much as a man to-day might pay a substitute to go to war in
times of draft. General taxation first appears in 1188 in the famous
Saladin tithe, the first historical instance of the taxation of
personal property as distinct from a feudal burden laid upon land.
The object of this tax was to raise money for the crusade against
the Sultan Saladin. It was followed, five years later, by a tax of
one-fourth of every person's revenue or goods to ransom the king,
Richard I having gone to this crusade against Saladin, and been
captured on his return by his good friend and Christian ally, the
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It is interesting to note that the
worth of the king in those days was considered exactly one-fourth of