THE BLUE LAWS OF CONNECTICUT: À COLLECTION OF THE EARLIEST STATUTES AND JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS BEING AN EXHIBITION OF THE RIGOROUS MORALS AND EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY Schmucker SAMUEL M. SMUCKER, LL.D., AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE four georges, KINGS OF ENGLAND," PHILADELPHIA: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year, 1860, by DUANE RULISON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PHILADELPHIA: STEREOTYPED BY S. A. GEORGE, 607 SANSOM STREET. @3-21-494T Handma съв PREFACE. THE term "Blue Laws" is an epithet which has long been applied by way of derision to those rigorous judicial regulations and proceedings which form a part of the early history of the colony of Connecticut; and which illustrate, in rather a peculiar and forcible manner, the primitive morals and legislation of the Puritans. These laws exceed, in the minuteness of their details and in the severity of their penalties, the enactments which were adopted by the rest of the American Colonies; nor are they equaled in these respects by the statutes and judicial decisions of any other community with which we are acquainted. Hence it is that they enjoy a kind of pre-eminence in regard to quaintness, bluntness, particularity, and antiquated excess of penalty, which has gained for them the equivocal epithet by which they have been generally designated for several generations. (3) |