In none of the middle colonies was crime so prevalent as to be a troublesome question, with the one exception of piracy,--the most common and widely demoralizing of all the dangers to which the colonists were subjected. Public officials often corruptly connived at the practice, and popular sentiment was not strongly against a set of men who brought wealth to the seaport towns and spent it lavishly. Hangings and whippings were not infrequent public spectacles in the colonies, and the pillory was much in use. In the Long Island towns the New Englanders, who were dominant there, faithfully reproduced their native customs in the punishment of crime as in most other particulars. The Quakers were, on the whole, the most lenient in their treatment of evil-doers, up to 1718, when the second generation of colonists abandoned the old theory of criminal legislation and adopted measures of harsh repression similar to those in vogue in other colonies. There was little pauperism, but perhaps more in Pennsylvania than elsewhere. In the treatment of this evil the Quakers were also wise, and in Philadelphia they established the first hospital for the insane, on the continent. 97. Political Conditions and Conclusion. Sidenote: Political spirit in the Jerseys, New Jersey having no foreign trade and but little manufacturing, her people were without experience of the harshness of the English Acts of Navigation and Trade (page 104, § 44). Since there was not much to complain of regarding treatment by the mother-country, they were generally loyal. Taxes were light, public salaries small, and the colony, with Pennsylvania and New York as buffers, was in no danger from Indians. Sidenote: in New York, On the other hand, New York was constantly subjected to border warfare, which proved a serious financial burden; taxation, levied by duties on slaves and imports, and on real and personal property, was clumsy and oppressive, and the government corrupt and expensive. English officials and wealthy Dutch were loyal because it was their interest to be so; but the mass of the people, rich and poor, favored liberal candidates to the assembly. The men from New England exerted a strong influence on the general trend of political thought. Elections excited great bitterness and often rioting, and they were made an excuse for the usual holiday excesses. There was a strong feeling of resentment against the home government, growing out of the Navigation Laws and the impressment of seamen. Sidenote: and in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania there prevailed a similar attitude of opposition to England; the Quakers were, however, conservative, and slow in action, and their dislike to bear arms made the colony a drag upon all attempts at continental union for common defence. As in New York, local politics ran in extremely narrow channels, and election riots were not uncommon. Sidenote: Summary.