part of the price back again, with confession of his sin to the party, as he thought himself bound to do. And it being feared that the report of his sin was heard further than the report of his satisfaction a course was concluded on to make the satisfaction, to as many as heard of the sin. It was also agreed upon at the said meetinge, that if the persons above named did find themselves straitened in the number of fit men for the 7, that it should be free for them to take into tryal of fitnesse such other as they should think meete. Provided that it should be signified to the town upon the Lord's day who they so take in that every man may be satisfied of them, according to the course formerly taken.

[The foregoing was subscribed and signed by one hundred and eleven persons.]

APPENDIX.

I.

THE FIRST COLLECTION OF LAWS ADOPTED IN THE COLONY OF MASSACHUSETTS. *

Ar the first meeting of the Court of Assistants at Charlestown, Aug. 23d, 1630, they established rules of proceeding in all civil actions, and instituted subordinate powers for punishing offenders. The supreme authority being in the Court of Assistants, they resolved upon frequent meetings for the due execution of it. As it was necessary for every family to provide lodgings before winter, the first law proposed and passed was for the regulating the price of wages of workmen, under a penalty to him that gave as well as to him who received more than the limited price. They pro

*The following judicial decisions and enactments were the first by which this colony was governed, and they deserve to be termed "Blue Laws" with as much propriety as those of Connecticut. They are taken from Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, Boston, 1769, p. 435.-S. M. S.

ceeded to other laws for punishing idleness and encouraging industry; and, as they were in the midst of savages much more numerous than themthemselves, they obliged every man to attend military exercises, and limited the bounds of their plantations that none might be more exposed than was necessary.

In civil actions, equity, according to the circumstances of the case, seems to have been their rule of determining. The judges had recourse to no other authorities than the reason and understanding which God had given them. In punishing offenses they professed to be governed by the judicial law of Moses, but no further than those laws were of a moral nature.

Whilst they were thus without a code or body of laws, and the colony but just come to its birth, their sentences seem to be adapted to the circumstances of a large family of children and servants; as will appear from the following, which, from amongst many others of the same sort, I have taken out of the public records.

Josias Plaistowe, for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, is ordered to return them eight baskets, to be fined five pounds, and hereafter to be called by the name of Josias, and not* Mr. as formerly he used to be.

* They were very careful that no title or appellation should be given where it was not due. Not more than half a dozen of the principal gentlemen took the title of esquire; and in a list of one hundred freemen you

Captain Stone for abusing Mr. Ludlow, and calling him justass, is fined an hundred pounds, and prohibited coming within the patent without the governor's leave upon pain of death.

Serjeant Perkins ordered to carry forty turfs to the fort for being drunk.

Edward Palmer for his extortion, in taking two pounds thirteen shillings and four pence for the wood work of Boston stocks, is fined five pounds, and ordered to be set one hour in the stocks.

Captain Lovel admonished to take heed of light carriage.

Thomas Petit for suspicion of slander, idleness and stubbornness, is censured to be severely whipped, and to be kept in hold.

Catherine, the wife of Richard Cornish, was found to be suspicious of incontinency, and seriously admonished to take heed.

Daniel Clarke, found to be an immoderate drinker, was fined forty shillings.

John Wedgewood, for being in the company of drunkards, to be set in the stocks.

John Kitchin, for showing books which he was commanded to bring to the governor, and forbidden to show them to any other and yet showed them, was fined ten shillings.

Robert Shorthose, for swearing by the blood of

will not find above four or five distinguished by Mr., although they were generally men of some substance. Goodman and goodwife were common appellations.

God, was sentenced to have his tongue put into a cleft stick, and to stand so for the space of half an hour.

In that branch of law more especially which is distinguished by the name of crown law, they professed to have no regard to the rules of the common law of England. They intended to follow Moses's plan, as has been observed, but no farther than it was of a moral nature* and obligatory upon all mankind, and perhaps they did not, in many instances, err in judgment upon the morality of actions, but their grand mistake lay in sup

*They did not go the length of the Brownists, who are said to have held "that no prince nor state on the earth hath any legislative power, that God alone is the lawgiver, that the greatest magistrate hath no other power but to execute the laws of God set down in scripture, that the judicial laws of Moses bind at this day all the nations of the world as much as ever they did the Jews."-Baylie.

Roger Williams said that "although they professed to be bound by such judicials only as contained in them moral equity, yet they extended this moral equity to so many particulars as to take in the whole judicial law, no less than the rigidest Brownists."Idem.

Although they did not go to this extreme, it must be allowed they did not keep within the limits they professed as their rule. They were charged with the holding it to be the duty of the magistrate to kill all idolaters and heretics, even whole cities, men, women, and children, from the command of the Israelites to root out the Canaanites.-Idem.