the community and the strict oversight of a public opinion which, except in Boston,--a large commercial place, where there was always a considerable floating population of sailors and others,--prevented the recognized existence of any class of professional prostitutes. On the one hand, a certain form of incontinence was not associated either in the male or female mind with the presence of a degraded class, while, on the other hand, the natural appetites were to a limited extent gratified. It was in their attempt wholly to ignore these natural appetites that Jonathan Edwards and the clergy of the last century fell into their error. I have alluded to the early church records of Plymouth as probably offering a peculiarly interesting field of inquiry in this matter. I have never seen those records, and know nothing of them; but as long ago as the year 1642 Governor Bradford had occasion to bewail the condition of affairs then existing at Plymouth,--"not only," he declared, "incontinencie betweene persons unmaried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some maried persons allso"; and he exclaimed, "Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickednes did grow and breake forth here, in a land wher the same was so much witnesed against, and so narrowly looked unto, and severly punished when it was knowne!" But finally, with great shrewdness and an insight into human nature which might well have been commended to the prayerful consideration of Jonathan Edwards and the revivalists of exactly one century later, Governor Bradford goes on to conclude that-- "It may be in this case as it is with waters when their streames are stopped or dammed up, when they gett passage they flow with more violence, and make more noys and disturbance, then when they are suffered to rune quietly in their owne chanels. So wikednes being here more stopped by strict laws, and the same more nerly looked unto, so as it cannot rune in a comone road of liberty as it would, and is inclined, it searches every wher, and at last breaks out wher it getts vente."[22]