tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public

sentiment. But, in that early

95 severity of their character, an inference of this

kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be

that a sluggish bond- servant, or an undutiful child,

whom his parents had given over to the civil

100 authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post.

It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or

other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged

out of the town, or an idle or

105 vagrant Indian, whom the white man’s firewater

had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven

with stripes into the shadow of the forest.

It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress

110 Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the

magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case,

there was very much the same solemnity of

demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted

115 a people among whom religion and law were

almost identical, and in whose character both were so

thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest

acts of public discipline were alike

120 made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold,

was the sympathy that a transgressor might

look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold.

On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days,

125 would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule,

might then be invested with almost as stern a

dignity as the punishment of death itself.

The following edited passage is taken from History of the Plague in London by Daniel Defoe on the plague’s re- emergence in Holland.

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbors, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in

5 Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought (some said from Italy, others from the Levant) among

10 some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others, from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into

15 Holland again.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days, to spread rumors and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as

20 I have lived to see practiced since. But such things as those were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so

25 that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the government had a true account of it, and several counsels were held about ways to prevent its coming

30 over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumor died off again; and people began to forget it, as a thing we were very little concerned in and that we hoped was not true, till the latter end of

35 November or the beginning of December, 1664, when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Longacre, or rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in

40 endeavored to conceal it as much as possible; but, as it had gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighborhood, the secretaries of state got knowledge of it. And concerning themselves to inquire

45 about it, in order to be certain of the truth,

two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the house, and make inspection. This they did, and finding evident tokens of the sickness upon both

50 the bodies that were dead, they gave their opinions publicly that they died of the plague. Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and he also returned them to the hall; and it was printed in the weekly

55 bill of mortality in the usual manner.

The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be alarmed all over the town, and the more because in the last week in December, 1664, another man

60 died in the same house and of the same distemper. And then we were easy again for about six weeks, when, none having died with any marks of infection, it was said the distemper was gone; but after

65 that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in another house, but in the same parish and in the same manner.

This turned the people’s eyes pretty much

70 towards that end of the town; and, the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St. Giles’s Parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the plague was among the people at that end

75 of the town, and that many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the public as possible. This possessed the heads of the people very much; and few cared to

80 go through Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unless they had extraordinary business that obliged them to it.

This increase of the bills stood thus: the

85 usual number of burials in a week, in the parishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and St. Andrew’s, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen each, few more or less; but, from the time that the plague

90 first began in St. Giles’s Parish, it was observed that the ordinary burials increased in number considerably.

The following edited passage is taken from Popular Law-Making by Frederic Jesup Stimson on early labour legislation and laws against trusts.

Far the most important phrase to us found in the Statute of Westminster I, save perhaps that common right should be done to rich and poor, is to be found in

5 this sentence: “Excessive toll, contrary to the common custom of the realm,” is forbidden. The statute applies only to market towns, but the principle established there would naturally go

10 elsewhere, and indeed most towns where there was any trade were, in those days, market towns. Every word is noticeable: “Excessive toll”—extortion in rates. As this statute passed into the common law

15 of England and hence our own, it has probably always been law in America except, possibly, in those few States which expressly repealed the whole common law and those where civil law

20 prevailed.

It was therefore equally unnecessary to adopt new statutes providing against extortion or discrimination, for the last part of the phrase “contrary to the

25 common custom of the realm” means discrimination. But this is one of the numerous cases where our legislatures, if not our bar and bench, erred through simple historical ignorance. They had

30 forgotten this law, or, more charitably, they may have thought it necessary to remind the people of it. There has been a recent agitation in this country with the object of compelling great public-service

35   companies, such as electric lighting or gas companies, to make the same rates to consumers, large or small. This also was very possibly the common law, and required no new statutes; there are cases

40 reported as far back as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where, for instance, a ferryman was punished for charging less for the ferriage of a large drove of sheep

or cattle than for a smaller number,

45 “contrary to the common custom of the realm.” Nine years before this statute is the Assize of Bread, attempting to fix the price of bread according to the cost of wheat, but notable to us as containing

50 both the first pure-food statute and the first statute against “forestalling.”

Now forestalling, regrating, and engrossing are the early English phrases for most of the unlawful or unmoral

55 actions which we ascribe to the modern trust. In fact, there is hardly one legal injury which a trust is said to commit in these days which cannot be ranked under those three heads, or that of monopoly or

60 that of restraint of trade.

“Forestalling” is the buying up provisions on the way to a market with intent to sell at a higher price; and the doctrine applied primarily to provisions, that is to say,

65 necessaries of life. Precisely the same thing exists to-day, only we term it the buying of futures, or the attempt to create a corner. We shall find that the buying of futures, that is to say, of crops not yet

70 grown or outputs not yet created, is still obnoxious to many of our legislatures to- day, and has been forbidden, or made criminal, in many States. “Regrating” is defined in some of the early dictionaries

75 as speculating in provisions; the offence of buying provisions at a market for the purpose of reselling them within four miles of the place. The careful regulation of markets and market towns that existed

80 in early times in England would not suffer some rich capitalist to go in and buy all that was offered for sale with intent of selling it to the same neighborhood at a higher price. Hatto of

85 the Rhine, you may remember, paid with his life for this offence. The prejudice against this sort of thing has by no means ended to-day. We have legislation against speculation in theatre tickets, as well as in

90 cotton or grain. “Engrossing” is really the result of a successful forestalling, with or without regrating; that is to say, it is a

complete “corner of the market”; from it our word “grocer” is derived. Such

95 corners, if completely successful, would have the public at their mercy; luckily they rarely

are; the difficulty, in fact, begins when you begin to regrate. But in artificial commodities it is easier; so in

100 the Northern Pacific corner, a nearly perfect engrossing; the shares of stock went to a

thousand dollars, and might have gone higher but for the voluntary interference of great financiers. Leiter’s

105 Chicago corner in wheat, Sully’s corner in cotton, were almost perfect examples of

engrossing, but failed when the regrating began. All these tend to monopoly, and act, of course, in restraint of trade; the

110 broader meanings of these two latter more important principles we leave for later

discussion.

The following edited passage is taken from On Laboratory Arts by Richard Threlfall on the choice of sizes of glass tube and testing glass.

It will be found that for general purposes tubes about one-quarter inch in inside diameter, and from one-twentieth to one-fortieth of an inch thick, are most

5 in demand. Some very thin soda glass of these dimensions (so-called “cylinder” tubes) will be found very handy for many purposes. For physico-chemical work a good supply of tubing, from one-

10 half to three-quarters of an inch inside diameter, and from one-twentieth to one-eighth inch thick, is very necessary.

A few tubes up to three inches diameter, and of various thicknesses, will also be

15 required for special purposes.

Thermometer and “barometer” tubing is occasionally required, the latter, by the way, making particularly bad barometers. The thermometer tubing

20 should be of all sizes of bore, from the finest obtainable up to that which has a bore of about one-sixteenth of an inch. Glass rods varying from about one- twentieth of an inch in diameter up to,

25 say, half an inch will be required, also two or three sticks of white enamel glass for making joints.

To facilitate choice, there is appended a diagram of sizes from the catalogue of a

30 reliable German firm, Messrs. Desaga of Heidelberg, and the experimenter will be able to see at a glance what sizes of glass to order. It is a good plan to stock the largest and smallest size of each

35 material as well as the most useful working sizes.

“Reject glass which has lumps or knots, is obviously conical, or has long drawn- out bubbles running through the

40 substance.” If a scratch be made on the surface of a glass tube, and one end of the scratch be touched by a very fine point of fused glass, say not more than one-sixteenth inch in diameter, the tube,

45 however large it is (within reason), ought to crack in the direction of the scratch. If a big crack forms and does not run straight, but tends to turn longitudinally, it is a sign that the glass

50 is ill annealed, and nothing can be done with it. If such glass be hit upon in the course of blow-pipe work, it is inadvisable to waste time upon it; the best plan is to reject it at once, and save

55 it for some experiment where it will not have to be heated.

The shortest way of selecting glass is to go to a good firm, and let it be understood that if the glass proves to be

60 badly annealed it will be returned. Though it was stated above that the glass should not be distinctly conical, of course allowance must be made for the length of the pieces, and, on the other

65 hand, a few highly conical tubes will be of immense service in special cases, and a small supply of such should be included.

The glass, as it is obtained, should be

70 placed in a rack, and covered by a cloth to reduce the quantity of dust finding its way into the tubes. It has been stated by Professor Ostwald that tubes when reared up on end tend to bend

75   permanently. I have not noticed this with lead glass well supported. Each different supply should be kept by itself and carefully described on a label pasted on to the rack, and tubes from different

80   lots should not be used for critical welds. This remark is more important in the case of soda than of lead glass.

In the case of very fine thermometer tubes it will be advisable to cover the

85 ends with a little melted shellac, or, in special cases, to obtain the tubes sealed from the works. Soda glass can generally be got in rather longer lengths than lead glass; the longer the lengths

90 are the better, for the waste is less.

It is useful to be able to distinguish the different kinds of glass by the colour.

This is best observed by looking towards a bright surface along the whole

95 length of the tube and through the glass. Lead glass is yellow, soda glass is green, and hard glass purple in the samples in my laboratory, and I expect this is practically true of most samples.

Tube Sizes Source: Richard Threlfall