Democracy in America

by Alexis de Tocqueville

Among these memorials, we particularly distinguish, as one of the most characteristic, the code of laws that the little state of Connecticut passed in 1650.17 The legislators of Connecticut18 occupied themselves first with penal laws; and, to compose them, they conceived the strange idea of drawing from sacred texts: “If any man [after legal conviction], shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God,” they say to begin with, “he shall be put to death.”*5 There follow ten or twelve provisions of the same nature, borrowed from the texts of Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery,19 and rape are punished by death; insult done by a son to his parents is struck with the same penalty. In this way they carried the legislation of a rude and half-civilized people into the heart of a society whose spirit was enlightened and mores mild; so one never saw the death penalty laid down more profusely in the laws, or applied to fewer of the guilty. In this body of penal laws, the legislators are above all preoccupied with the care of maintaining moral order and good mores in society; so they constantly penetrate into the domain of conscience, and there is almost no sin that does not fall subject to the censure of the magistrate.