to deter others from such practices. The custom of wearing long hair was
deemed immodest, impious and abominable. All who were guilty of swearing
rashly, might purchase an exemption from punishment for a schilling; but
those who should transgress the fourth commandment were to be condemned
to banishment, and such as should worship images, to death. Children were
to be punished with death, for cursing or striking their father or
mother. Marriages were to be solemnized by magistrates; and all who
denied the coercive authority of the magistrate in religious matters, or
the validity of infant baptism, were to be banished. Blasphemy, perjury,
adultery, and witchcraft, were all made capital offences. In short, we
may challenge the annals of any nation to produce a code of laws more
intolerant than that of the first settlers in New-England. Unlimited
obedience was enjoined to the authority of the magistrate, by the same
men who had refused such submission in England, and fled from their
native country because it was demanded. Thus, however incredible it may
appear, blind fanatics became public legislators, and those who were
unable to endure tyranny in England, became the most insupportable
tyrants in America.

This oppressive rigour of their first laws was soon heavily felt by many,
but especially by that peaceable society of people called Quakers. Some
of this sect, who had been banished on account of their religion, out of
mere zeal for making proselytes, returned to the country. They were
instantly seized by those oppressors, condemned and hanged, to prevent
the clandestine incursions of others. Those who had the misfortune to be
taken with convulsions, or any disorder to which vulgar ignorance was a
stranger, were accused of witchcraft, and condemned to death. No age nor
sex were secure from such suspicions, when ignorance, malice and phrenzy
joined in framing accusations, and selecting victims at pleasure. Dreams,
apparitions and tortures were all employed as evidences against persons