16 EARLY QUARANTINE ARRANGEMENTS OF SALEM. 



About the year 1700, a general system of regulation be- 

 gan to develop itself, resulting in a law differing only from 

 the vetoed act of 1699, in that it enjoined every justice of 

 the peace to intervene in executing it, and the selectmen to 

 take care of the sick at the cost of the persons or of towns, 

 save in the case of paupers without settlement, they to 

 be provided for at the cost of the Province. This act of 

 the last year of William III was the basis of our quaran- 

 tine system. It was passed during a period of disquiet. 

 The charters were in danger. Massachusetts was asserting 

 rights and exercising powers denied to her by the advisers of 

 the Crown ; and in the midst of the confusion incident to the 

 retirement of Earl Bellomont from the Executive Chair of 

 the Province and the resumption of that coveted seat by the 

 once expatriated Dudley, and while it was temporarily filled 

 a second time, for a few months, by the aged and decrepit 

 Stoughton, then Lieutenant Governor, this fortunate law 

 seems to have slipped through the prescribed forms of en- 

 actment. These are its terms. 



AN ACT PROVIDING IN CASE OF SICKNESS. 



Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governour, Council and 

 Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the 

 authority of the same, 



[Sect. 1.] That, for the better preventing the spreading 

 of infection, when it shall happen any person or persons 

 coming from abroad or belonging to any town or place with- 

 in this province to be visited, or that late before have been 

 visited with the plague, small pox, pestilential or malignant 

 feaver, or other contagious sickness, the infection whereof 

 may probably be communicated to others, the selectmen of 

 such town be and hereby are impowred to take care and 

 make effectual provision, in the best manner they can, for 

 the preservation of the inhabitants, by removing and place- 



