rtals. With constables, deacons, the parson, and
that lab-o'-the-tongue--the tithing-man--each on the alert to keep every
one from drinking but himself, the Puritan had little chance to be a
toper an he would.

The colonists were fiercely intolerant of intemperance among the
Indians. Laws were made as early as 1633 prohibiting the sale of strong
waters to the "inflamed devilish bloudy salvages," and persons selling
liquor to them were sharply prosecuted and punished. New Yorkers thought
these laws over-severe, saying, deprecatingly, "to prohibit all strong
liquor to them seems very hard and very turkish, rumm doth as little
hurt as the ffrenchmans Brandie, and in the whole is much more
wholesome." But the Puritans knew of the horrors to be dreaded from
drunken Indians.

So plentiful had the sale of ale and beer become in 1675 that Cotton
Mather said every other house in Boston was an ale-house, and a century
later Governor Pownall made the same assertion. The Puritan magistrates
in New England made at a very early date a decided stand not only
against excessive drinking by strangers, but against the habit of
drunkenness in their citizens. Drunkards were in 1636, in Massachusetts,
subject to fine and imprisonment in the stocks, and sellers were
forbidden to furnish the tippler with any liquor thereafter. An habitual
drunkard was punished by having a great D made of "Redd Cloth" hung
around his neck, or sewed on his clothing, and he was disfranchised. In
1630 Governor Winthrop abolished the "Vain Custom" of drinking healths
at his table, and in 1639 the Court publicly ordered the cessation of
the practice because "it was a thing of no use, it induced drunkenness
and quarrelling, it wasted wine and beer and it was troublesome to many,
forcing them to drink more than they wished." A fine of twelve shillings
was imposed on each health-drinker. Cotton Mather, however, thought
health-drinking a usage of common politeness. In Connecticut no man
could drink over half a pint of wine at a time, or tipple over half an
hour, or drink at all at an ordinary after nine o'clock at night.

All these rigid laws had their effect, and New Englanders throughout the
seventeenth century were sober and law-abiding save in a few
communities, such as that at Merrymount, where "good chear went forward
and strong liquors walked." Boston was an especially orderly town.
Several visiting and resident clergymen testified that they had not seen
a dru