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 prosecution by way of indictment in the court
 of sessions° The number of prosecutions for
 sexual offenses immediately declined to an
 average of eleven per year during 1786-1790
 and to less than five per year during the
 four decades thereafter°
 Prosecutions for religious offelnses also
 continued near the prewar rate of twenty-four
 per year until the mid-1780_s. But by the
 1790_s the number of cases had declined to
 about ten per year The decrease is
 explained by the fact that after the 1780's
 prosecutions continued only for the offenses
 of working and traveling on Sunday. Even the
 Sunday work and travel laws were less rigidly
 enforced, with the result that by the 1810's
 "the Laws against profana=ions of the
 Sabbath, had fallen into general neglect
 (and) thousands of violations occurred every
 year, with scarcely a single instance of
 punishment. '_
 The law's attitude toward adultery was also
 changing, although the number of prosecutions
 remained relatively constant° l[n 1973 the
 Supreme Judicial Court began regularly to
 grant divorces on the ground of adultery, yet
 prosecutions for the crime remained rare.
 Too many contemporaries the de-emphasis of
 prosecution for sin appeared to be a decline
 in morals° President Timothy Dwight of Yale
 traced the decline to the French and Indian
 War and especially to the Revolution, which,
 he said, has added "to the depravation
 still remaining (from the French War) a
 long train of imzn_oral doctrines and
 practices_ which spread into every corner of
 the country° The profanation of! the Sabbath,
 before unusual, profaneness of language,
 drunkenness, gambling and lewdness were
 exceedingly increased _ Others also
 alluded to habits of card playing and
 gambling and to instances of social vice and
 illegitimacy. Chief Justice William Cushing,
 for example, feared that "some men
 ha(d) been so liberal in thinking as to