COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 15 



daring recklessness. Those days are passed and shame throws 

 its thick mantle over them. ' ' 



An isolated community always tends toward social degenera- 

 tion, and the drunkenness, rowdyism, and general coarseness of 

 manners of the inland towns at this time were but premonitions 

 of the more disastrous results which might be expected from 

 economic and social stagnation. At no time in these commun- 

 ities was there a distinct criminal class, of the type now tech- 

 nically known as degenerate ; but petty crimes, stealing, assaults 

 and disturbances were of frequent occurrence. There are many 

 indications that the influence of the church was decadent. Up 

 to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the ecclesiastical or- 

 ganization had secured, by means of a censorship of the private 

 life of its members so inquisitorial as to seem nowadays intoler- 

 able, fairly submissive adherence to a rigid code of morality. 

 With the decline in the authority of the church in matters of 

 doctrine came <also a weakening in its control over the conduct of 

 its adherents. 



Another cause of laxity in morals, of probably greater im- 

 portance, was the general spirit of lawlessness spreading over 

 the country after the Revolution, which seems especially to have 

 affected the country districts. The soldiers returning from the 

 war found it hard to settle down and get their living honestly in 

 the previous humdrum routine. They brought back with them 

 new and often vicious habits which the rest of the community 

 imitated. Then, in the interval between the overturn of the 

 regularly constituted colonial authorities and the establishment 

 of the national government under the new federal constitution, 

 there was a period of semi-anarchy, when obedience to any sort 

 of law was difficult to enforce. The disrespect for authority in 

 both church and state which arose from these conditions could 

 not fail to have a distinctly bad influence on the moral conditions 

 in inland towns. In the disturbances of those days the inland 

 farmer was generally to be found on the side of rebellion, and 

 active in opposing a reestablishment of law and order. 



Too much emphasis must not be laid upon the dark features of 

 the community life of these times. Undoubtedly there were 

 many advantages arising from the homogeneous construction of 

 society, from the uniformity of the inhabitants in race, religion 



