passionate carnality—were frowned upon. Drunkenness, riotous living, and adultery were regarded with horror by the elect and penalized by the lawmakers partly on theological grounds and partly with an eye to industry and thrift.
And yet, far and wide as Puritanism reached, New England was not as deadly uniform as superficial writers imagine. Before Boston was three generations old, alien elements broke the severe regimen of the fathers. In spite of the hostile reception accorded to them Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Huguenots insisted on settling down among the faithful, becoming so strong in numbers and wealth that the English government wrote into the new charter of 1691 a clause making property, instead of church membership, the test for the suffrage. On the eve of the Revolution, more than one-third of the rich merchants of Boston were outside the pale of the Congregational Church, adhering to manners and customs of their own.
In Connecticut, as well as Massachusetts, there were many good Anglicans who winked at the blue laws and thought with King Charles II that God would not punish anyone for taking a few pleasures by the way. Rhode Island too was a thorn in the side of the righteous in Boston because it tolerated from the first a laxity in religious opinion and a personal liberty that violated accepted traditions. In fact, the descendants of the pioneers who followed Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson into the wilderness were more active in the manufacture and sale of rum than in the enforcement of Sabbatarian discipline. New Hampshire likewise showed strange folkways, especially after the Scotch-Irish began to pour into the province and clear the hills of their crowns. In any event, the law was one thing and its execution another; the clergy and the politicians could get a penal measure through a legislature easier than they could carry it into operation.
Notwithstanding strict laws with respect to Sunday observance and sins of the flesh, there was in the South, above
