By the laws of 1798, fines not exceeding one dollar were imposed by a Professor or Tutor, or the Librarian; not exceeding two dollars, by the President; all above two dollars, by the President, Professors, and Tutors, at a meeting.

Upon this subject, with reference to Harvard College, Professor Sidney Willard remarks:  “For a long period fines constituted the punishment of undergraduates for negligence in attendance at the exercises and in the performance of the lessons assigned to them.  A fine was the lowest degree in the gradation of punishment.  This mode of punishment or disapprobation was liable to objections, as a tax on the father rather than a rebuke of the son, (except it might be, in some cases, for the indirect moral influence produced upon the latter, operating on his filial feeling,) and as a mercenary exaction, since the money went into the treasury of the College.  It was a good day for the College when this punishment through the purse was abandoned as a part of the system of punishments; which, not confined to neglect of study, had been extended also to a variety of misdemeanors more or less aggravated and aggravating.”—­Memories of Youth and Manhood, Vol.  I. p. 304.

“Of fines,” says President Woolsey, in his Historical Discourse relating to Yale College, “the laws are full, and other documents show that the laws did not sleep.  Thus there was in 1748 a fine of a penny for the absence of an undergraduate from prayers, and of a half-penny for tardiness or coming in after the introductory collect; of fourpence for absence from public worship; of from two to six pence for absence from one’s chamber during the time of study; of one shilling for picking open a lock the first time, and two shillings the second; of two and sixpence for playing at cards or dice, or for bringing strong liquor into College; of one shilling for doing damage to the College, or jumping out of the windows,—­and so in many other cases.

“In the year 1759, a somewhat unfair pamphlet was written, which gave occasion to several others in quick succession, wherein, amidst other complaints of President Clap’s administration, mention is made of the large amount of fines imposed upon students.  The author, after mentioning that in three years’ time over one hundred and seventy-two pounds of lawful money was collected in this way, goes on to add, that ’such an exorbitant collection by fines tempts one to suspect that they have got together a most disorderly set of young men training up for the service of the churches, or that they are governed and corrected chiefly by pecuniary punishments;—­that almost all sins in that society are purged and atoned for by money.’  He adds, with justice, that these fines do not fall on the persons of the offenders,—­most of the students being minors,—­but upon their parents; and that the practice takes place chiefly where there is the least prospect of working a reformation, since the thoughtless and extravagant, being the principal