3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Bussaker was condemned for drunkenness to be whipped with 

 twenty stripes well laid on. Robert Coles, for drunkenness com- 

 mitted at Roxbury, was condemned to be disfranchised, and to 

 wear about his neck so that it would hang upon his outward gar- 

 ment a letter D, made of red cloth, and set upon white, to con- 

 tinue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time in public, 

 under penalty of forty shillings for the first offense and five 

 pounds for the second. Severity of punishments appeared only 

 to aggravate the evil against which they were directed, for in 

 1648 the Court was forced to declare that " it is found by experi- 

 ence that a great quantity of wine is spent and much thereof is 

 abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, not- 

 withstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for 

 the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, with a blind per- 

 versity which is a remarkable instance of the fatuity which actu- 

 ates people when they endeavor to accomplish the impossible, 

 that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not har- 

 bor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up 

 to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds 

 for disobedience. 



Tobacco, for some cause or other, was especially obnoxious to 

 the early colonial authorities of Massachusetts. The trade in the 

 weed was only allowed to the old planters, but the sale or use of it 

 was absolutely forbidden unless upon urgent occasion for the 

 benefit of health and taken privately. It was also ordered that 

 victualers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco 

 to be taken into their houses, under penalty of five shillings for 

 every offense, to be paid by the victualer, and twelvepence by the 

 person who takes it. Further, it was ordered that no person 

 should take tobacco publicly, under the penalty of two shillings 

 sixpence, nor privately in his own house or in the house of an- 

 other before strangers ; and that two or more shall not take it 

 together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offense. 



It is true these laws against the use of tobacco are not so severe 

 as some that have been enacted in other countries, but they were 

 equally inefficacious. Thus, a Sultan of Turkey issued an edict 

 to the effect that any one of his subjects detected in the act of 

 smoking should for the first offense have his cheeks bored and 

 transfixed by his pipe ; for the second offense he was to have 

 his nose cut off ; and for the third he was to lose his head. 

 Fines in the case of the New-Englanders, and mutilation and 

 death in the case of the Turks, have not in the slightest degree 

 prevented the use of tobacco ; and that some recent laws to 

 which I shall presently draw attention will prove equally futile 

 there can be. no doubt. 



In all these instances of sumptuary laws the ground has been 



