Scolds they gag and set them at their own Doors, for certain
hours together for all comers and goers to gaze at. Were this a
Law in England and well Executed it wou'd in a little Time prove
an Effectual Remedy to cure the Noise that is in many Women's
heads.

Stealing is punished with Restoring four-fold if able; if not,
they are sold for some years, and so are poor Debtors. I have not
heard of many Criminals of this sort. But for Lying and Cheating
they out-vye Judas and all the false other cheats in Hell. Nay,
they make a Sport of it: Looking upon Cheating as a commendable
Piece of Ingenuity, commending him that has the most skill to
commit a piece of Roguery; which in their Dialect (like those of
our Yea-and-Nay-Friends in England) they call by the genteel Name
of Out-Witting a Man and won't own it to be cheating.

After mentioning the case of a man in Boston who bought a horse of a
countryman who could not read and gave him a note payable at the "Day
of the Resurrection," etc. Dunton goes on to say: "In short, These
Bostonians enrich themselves by the ruine of Strangers, etc.... But
all these things pass under the Notion of Self-Preservation and
Christian Policy."

It would hardly be fair to quote all this from Dunton's letters unless
we added what he says of Boston in another place; namely, "And though
the Generality are what I have described them, yet is there as sincere
a Pious and truly Religious People among them as is any where in the
Whole World to be found."

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