From the time of the earliest English settlers in America the drink traffic has been looked upon as a business requiring special regulation. The influence of Puritan immigrants in the middle of the seventeenth century led to the framing of many severe liquor laws. Ludlow's Connecticut Code in 1650 dealt with the subject on the basis that "while there is a need for houses of common entertainment ... yet because there are so many abuses of that lawful liberty ... there is also need of strict laws to regulate such an employment"; and it was enacted "that no drink seller should suffer any person to consume more than half a pint at a time, or to tipple more than half an hour at a stretch, or after nine o'clock at night". The first American prohibitory law was passed by the English Parliament in 1735, when "the importation of rum or brandies" in Georgia was forbidden. This was done at the instance of James Oglethorpe, then head of the colony, who declared that the excessive sickness there was solely due to the over-consumption of rum punch. While Oglethorpe remained at Savannah the law was strictly enforced, and all spirits found were destroyed; but after he left it was allowed to fall into abeyance, and in 1742 it was formally repealed by Parliament. The modern legislative movement took its rise between 1830 and 1840, when the whole of New England was convulsed by an uncompromising campaign against intemperance. Almost the entire community seemed for a time carried away by the crusade against intoxicants. In nearly every place powerful temperance societies were formed; many gin merchants closed their distilleries, and saloon keepers put up their shutters and bade the people come and spill the contents of their rum barrels down the gutters. At first, teetotalers relied solely on moral suasion; but soon the more advanced section in Massachusetts and Maine demanded that the law should aid them by putting a stop to the legalised sale of drink. As early as 1837 a committee of the Maine Legislature on licensing laws reported that "the traffic (in strong drink) is attended with the most appalling evils to the community.... It is an unmitigated evil.... Your committee are not only of opinion that the law giving the right to sell ardent spirits should be repealed, but that a law should be passed to _prohibit_ the traffic in them, except so far as the arts or the practice of medicine may be concerned." At that time the traffic in intoxicants in Maine was considerable; but the saloon keepers were without any efficient organisation, and consequently could not offer any united opposition to the new movement. There were seven distilleries, and between three and four hundred rum shops in Portland alone. According to the Hon. Woodbury Davis, ex-Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, "nearly every tavern in country and in city had its bar; at almost every village and 'corner' was a grog shop, and in most places of that kind more than one....