It might reasonably have been expected, that those emigrants who made New-England their asylum from what they deemed civil tyranny and ecclesiastical persecution, would have guarded against every degree of oppression and persecution in that form of government they were about to establish among themselves. This, however, was far from being the case. Some of their first laws favour of a degree of persecution and intolerance unknown in the most despotic governments of Europe; and those who fled from persecution became the most bitter persecutors. Those who were found dancing or drunk were ordered to be publicly whipped, in order to deter others from such practices. The custom of wearing long hair was deemed immodest, impious and abominable. All who were guilty of swearing rashly, might purchase an exemption from punishment for a schilling; but those who should transgress the fourth commandment were to be condemned to banishment, and such as should worship images, to death. Children were to be punished with death, for cursing or striking their father or mother. Marriages were to be solemnized by magistrates; and all who denied the coercive authority of the magistrate in religious matters, or the validity of infant baptism, were to be banished. Blasphemy, perjury, adultery, and witchcraft, were all made capital offences. In short, we may challenge the annals of any nation to produce a code of laws more intolerant than that of the first settlers in New-England. Unlimited obedience was enjoined to the authority of the magistrate, by the same men who had refused such submission in England, and fled from their native country because it was demanded. Thus, however incredible it may appear, blind fanatics became public legislators, and those who were unable to endure tyranny in England, became the most insupportable tyrants in America.