merly. Here was a chance for the community to take a hand in punishing a somewhat contemptible malefactor. It would have been more or less than human if it had not enjoyed the privilege.
By far the neatest instance of making the punishment fit the crime is recorded in Governor Bradford's "Diary of Occurrences." The carpenter employed to construct the stocks for the Plymouth colonists thought fit to charge an excessive rate for the job; whereupon he was speedily clapped into his own instrument, "being the first to suffer this penalty." And we profess to pity the Puritans for the hardness and dulness of their lives! Why, if we could but see a single profiteer sitting in the stocks, one man out of the thousands who impudently oppress the public punished in this admirable and satisfactory manner, we should be willing to listen to sermons
