120 



CIVIL HISTORY OF VERMONT. 



Part II 



LAWS OF VERMONT. 



PENAL LAWS. 



Sj:ction 111. 

 Legislation and Laics. 



The business of legislation was com- 

 menced in Vermont in 1778, but the laws 

 passed that year were probably designed 

 to be temporary, as no record of them is 

 preserved. They are supposed to have 

 consisted mostly of general enactments, 

 such as declaring the laws " as theij stood 

 in the Connecticut Imc hook,'' or, ' in defect 

 of such laws, the plain word of God, as 

 contained in the Scriptures,' to be the law 

 of the land. In February, 1779, the legis- 

 lature of Vermont enacted its first code 

 of printed laws."* These were promul- 

 gated by a proclamation put forth by gov- 

 ernor Chittenden on the 23d of February, 

 commanding tiie people of the state " to 

 take notice thereof and govern themselves 

 accordingly."! These laws,althougJi many 

 of their provisions have been swept away 

 by subsecjuent enactments, form the basis 

 of the present statute laws of Vermont. 



Since 177!), the acts of each session of 

 the general assembly have been published, 

 soon after the close of the session, in 

 pamphlet form, and of these, there have 

 been occasional revisions and compilations 

 tinder the direction and authority of the 

 legislature. 



The first general revision of the laws 

 of Vermont took place in 1787. These 

 revised statutes were printed at Windsor, 

 by Hough and Spooner, state printers, in 

 a small folio volume, and reprinted at 

 Bennington by Anthony Haswell, in 17!)1, 

 in an octavo volume of 320 pages, togeth- 

 er with the subsequent acts of the legisla- 

 ture up to that period. The second general 

 revision of the laws took place in 1797. The 

 committee appointed for that purpose con- 

 sisted of Roswell Hopkins, Richard Whit- 

 ney, Nathaniel Chipman and Samuel 

 Hitchcock. The statutes reported by this 

 committee were adopted by the legisla- 

 ture in February and March, 1797, and 

 printed at Rutland by Josiah Fay, in 1798, 

 in one octavo volume of 622 pages, to- 

 gether with an appendix of 206 pages. 



In 1807, a compilation of the unrepeal- 

 ed laws of the state was made by Thomas 

 Tolman, by order of the legislature, which 

 was printed at Randolph, in 1808, by Se- 

 reno Wright, in two volumes octavo, the 

 first containing 504, and tlie second 554 

 pages. A third volume of 336 pages, 

 embracing the public statutes from 1808 

 to 1816 inclusive, on the plan of the pre- 

 ceding, was published at Rutland in 1817, 

 by Davison and Burt. In 1824, a new 

 compilation, embracing all the public stat- 

 utes then in force, togetlier with brief no- 



* Slado'8 Slate Papers, p. 987—363. t Ibid. 3S3. 



tices of private acts, was made by Will- 

 iam Slade, Jr., and the whole comprised 

 in one octavo volume of 756 pages, print- 

 ed at Windsor, in 1825, by Simeon Ide. 

 An additional volume of 228 pages, com- 

 prising tlie public acts from 1825 to 1834 

 inclusive, was compiled by Daniel P. 

 Tliompson, in 1834, and printed in 1835, 

 atMontpelier, by Knapp and Jewett. 



In 1837 the legislature passed an act 

 authorizing tiie governor and lieutenant 

 governor to appoint a committee of five 

 persons to revise the statute laws of the 

 state, and report the result of their labora 

 to the legislature. Tlie committee kp-- 

 poited in pursuance of this act consisted 

 of Robert Pierpont, Samuel Swift, John 

 Smith, Norman Williams, and Lucius B. 

 Peck. In 1839, their report was laid be- 

 fore the legislature, and with some slight 

 amendments was adopted as the Revised 

 Statutes of the state. These revised 

 statutes were printed at Burlington, by 

 Chauncey Goodrich, in 1840, in one vol- 

 ume containing 676 large octavo pages. 



Penal Laws. The penal laws of Ver- 

 mont have experienced very considerable 

 modification since the adoption of tiie first 

 printed code in 1779. We have already 

 seen that before the organization of the 

 government of tlie state, whipping, or as 

 it was technically termed, the application 

 of the " Beech Seal," was the most com- 

 mon corporal punishment. The same, 

 with several other relics of European bar- 

 barism, was retained for many years under 

 the state organization. As a matter of 

 curiosity, and to illustrate the change 

 which lias taken place in our penal laws, 

 we iiave selected a few specimens from 

 the laws of 1779. 



In the law fi.xing the penalty for tlie 

 crime of adultery, it is declared that "both 

 the man and the woman shall be severely 

 punished by whipping on the naked body, 

 not exceeding thirty nine stripes, and 

 stigmatized, or burnt on the forehead with 

 the letter A on a hot iron ; and each of 

 them shall wear the capital letter A on 

 the back of their outside garment, of a 

 different color, in fair view, during their 

 abode in this state. And as often as such 

 convicted person shall be seen without 

 such letter, and be thereof convicted be- 

 fore an assistant, or justice of the peace in 

 this state, shall be whipped on the naked 

 body not e.xceeding ten stripes."* Polyg- 

 amy was punished in tlie same way. 

 Incest was punished by sitting one hour 

 upon the gallows with a rope about the 

 neck, — by being severely whipped on the 

 way from the gallows to the jail, — and by 

 wearing the letter I in full view on the 



'blade's Vt. Stale Papers, p. 290. 



