EARLY QUARANTINE ARRANGEMENTS OF SALEM. 7 



on like penalty. The like order was sent to Salem & 

 other haven towns." 



It should be understood that the " Castle" was in the 

 Harbor of Boston some leagues distant from Salem, and the 

 order requiring inward bound vessels to stay there may 

 have had no bearing on vessels bound to Salem, which 

 would.not necessarily come within hail of the Castle. Be- 

 sides these precautionary measures a Fast was ordered by 

 the Court, " being sencible of the great mortality of o r 

 country men in the West Indies" and for other causes. 



The first colonial legislation, which I find, intended to 

 regulate Ports of Entry, bears date 1668, and in all the 

 twenty-seven sections of the act, there is no allusion to 

 the public health, so far was this matter left in the hands 

 of the local authorities. .Indeed, in Salem, we only 

 completed our harbor fortification by impressing men in 

 1669, so that it would not have been easy before that 

 date to enforce an act like that of 1647. This act I insert 

 entire. It was repealed about two years later, and with 

 the exception of a similar act suggested by the London 

 plague of 1665, and also of two years' duration, and lim- 

 ited to ships from England as that had been to ships 

 from the West Indies, no colonial legislation touching 

 our subject was attempted until the end of the century, 

 when a general quarantine law of larger scope, passed in 

 1699, was disallowed the next year by the Privy Council, 

 on the ground that it usurped powers of regulating trade 

 properly belonging to the Royal Governor and Coun- 

 cil. And it may have been due to this jealousy that the 

 towns preferred to make their own quarantine arrange- 

 ments rather than invite the exercise of the veto-power by 

 legislative enactments. The act of 1647-8 is as follows : 



"Forasmuch as this Cote is credibly informed y* y e 

 plague, or like greivos [inj fectious disease, hath lately ex- 



