The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-01-10

paragraph with liberal quotations rom the Old and New Testaments, The law against heresy was justified by Acts 1910. The law providing that all liquor casks should be of the London standard was based on Deut. xXv, 15; Micah, vi, 10. The tariff laws were defended un- der Romans xiii, '.
 Davenport's theory of civil govern- ment as has been shown, was substan- tially this: First, let the Scriptures furnish all necessary law; second, let the laws be executed by members of the church; third, enforce every law, be- cause it is the law of God.
 It would be ridiculous, were it not pathetic, to note the severity with which these laws were enforced. Many cases that would have been better disposed Of by an admonition and wholesome ad- vice, were brought before the magls- trates. The penalty was generally a fine, imprisonment or a public hogging; sometimes all three. The extreme case was doubtless that of Martha Malbon. whose own father sat on the court which condemned her to be flogged at the public whipping-post.
 It has been said that we had no "blue laws" but those we did have must have produced something like an indigo hue in the minds of habitual offenders.
 We naturally wonder why the right of trial by jury was not incorporated into the New Haven laws. In most civilized communities prisoner had the right to demand that he be tried by jury of his fellow men, instead of by a single magistrate. But MT. Daven- port did not find anything in the law of Moses about trial by jury, and there fore concluded that that institution was not of divine origin.
 Davenport did not come here with the purpose of finding religious freedom for all men. He did not believe in that. He thought that a too free rein in that direction would lead to the undermining of all religion. His own religious belief he considered the right one, and the one that everybody should adopt If people were free to believe as they chose, they might adopt something false, and per- suade others to the same faith. So laws were passed forbidding the estab- lishment of any form of worship in the colonial jurisdiction, which now em- braced a large number of towns, and included part of Long Island, which had not first received the approval Of the local church.
 The dread of heresy at that time was something impossible to comprehend in these days of comparative toleration. A belief in witchcraft, based on the Bibli- cal reference to the witch of Endor. tended to heighten the dread of heret- ics, who were in extreme cases supposed to be direct emisaries of the devil Bas- ing, as they did, everything upon their construction of the law of Moses (which they assumed to be the complete word of God), every belief that did not con- form to that standard, they logically
 condemned as heresy. And as all here sy was contrary to the law of God, 1t
 was the duty of His people to stamp it
 out, as a poisonous serpent. An exam
 pie may serve to illustrate the thor
 oughness with which the heresy laws
 were executed.
 One Humphrey Norton was arrested
 in Southhold, l.. l., and brought to New
 Haven, charged with heresys substan- tially as follows: That he had grievous- ly slandered not only the minister at
 Southhold, but all ministers; that he had endeayored to seduce people from church attendance, and to spread sun
 dry heretical opinions, that he had cried
 out against the magistrates, was
 guilty of blasphemy, etc Tn our own day he would be punished, if at all for a simple breach of the peace. But the sting of the offense lay in the spreading of heretical opinions. He was first fined sum of money and flogged at the pub lie whipping post. Then, in order to show that this was no trifiing matter, he was branded on the back of the hand with red hot iron in the shape of the letter "H'' (the brand of heretic), and banished from the Jurisdiction.
 Davenport's critics have claimed that
 in this case he not only transcended the
 laws of the colony, but even those of common humanity; that this punish ment so far exceeded the offense as to | flavor of fanatical cruelty, and to reveal 1 a deadly hate. The written laws pro vided merely fine and banishment, but ] left good deal of leeway by allowing 1 the magistrates to administer such ex- | tra punshments as they might deem 1 fit.
 | It might be claimed that this being a matter for the courts, the results are il, l no wise chargable to Davenport; but ' it is only fair to admit that while his | office was ostensibly that of preacher and pastor, he made it his business to see that heretics received something to | remember him by. We will perhaps be | sorry to hear that he did not consider | the heresy law severe enough, but so i the records read, and at the next ses- sion of the general court they were
 brought thoroughly up to date, so as to
 be in keeping with the progressive spirit of the time. The new laws were aimed at "a cursed sect Of heretics lately risen | up in the world which are commonly called Quakers," and provided that none of them should be allowed in the juris- diction except for the transaction of
 necessary business; that then they must | be accompanied about the town by two
 orthodox colonists whose duty it should
 be to see that no heretical opinions were expressed. For the first offense the l penalty was fogging and imprison- \ ment.
 1 For the second offense every male l Quaker was to be branded on ye hand with ye letter IT and be imprisoned at hard labor. For the third offense it was ordered that he be branded on ye | other hand; and for the fourth offense