The prisons found little occupation as compared with the pillory and the whipping post. The latter was the common corrector of drunkenness. We have an amusing description of what constitutes drunkenness, from Colonel Dodberry: "Now for to know a drunken man the better, the Scriptures describes them to stagger and reel to and fro; and so when the same legs which carry a man into the house can not bring him out again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness."
In 1676, during the supremacy of Nathaniel Bacon, at which time so many laws were passed for the purpose of suppressing long standing abuses, a legislative attempt was made to enforce what practically amounted to general prohibition. The licenses of all inns, alehouses, and tippling houses, except those at James City, and at the two great ferries of York River, were revoked. The keepers of the ordinaries which were permitted to remain open at the latter places were allowed to sell only beer and cider. This regulation was remarkable in that it was adopted by the action of the people, who must have been the principal customers of the tippling houses, if not of the inns. Not content with putting a stop to sales in public places, the framers of the regulation further prescribed that "no one should presume to sell any sort of drink whatsoever, by retail, under any color, pretence, delusion, or subtle evasion whatsoever, to be drunk or spent in his or their house or houses, upon his or their plantation or plantations."
The general court of Massachusetts on one occasion required the proper officers to notice the apparel of the people, especially their "ribbands and great boots." Drinking of healths in public or private; funeral badges; celebrating the church festivals of Christmas and Easter; and many other things that seemed quite improper to magistrates and legislators, and especially to the Puritan clergy, were forbidden.
In Pennsylvania men were imprisoned in a cage seven feet high, seven feet wide, and seven feet long, for selling liquor to the Indians and for watering the white man's rum, both of which offences the law placed on equal footing.
Virginia and New Jersey declared liquor debts uncollectible by law.
Several of the colonies forbade workmen to be paid in liquor. In Massachusetts, in 1764, the law required that all who bought liquor should render an account of it except state officers, professors and students of Harvard College, and preachers of the gospel.
The law frequently manifested great concern about the clergy. Virginia had a statute making it an offence for a minister to appear drunk in his pulpit on Sunday, and in addition the following statute:
"Ministers shall not give themselves to excess in drinking or riot, spending their time idly by day or by night, playing at dice, cards, or any unlawful game, but at all times convenient they shall hear or read some what of the Holy Scriptures."
It is one of the curiosities of old time legislation that the use of tobacco was in earliest colonial days plainly regarded by the magistrates and elders as far more sinful, degrading, and harmful than indulgence in intoxicating liquors. No one could take tobacco "publicquely" nor in his own house, or anywhere else before strangers. Two men were forbidden to smoke together. No one could smoke within two miles of the meeting house on the Sabbath day. There were wicked backsliders who were caught smoking around the corner of the meeting house, and others in the street, and they were fined and set in the stocks and in cages.