Tornadoes are also a not infrequent infliction, least common in the west.
Together with the kings and ephors it formed the supreme executive committee of the state, and it exercised also a considerable criminal and political jurisdiction, including the trial of kings; its competence extended to the infliction of a sentence of exile or even of death.
The whipping-post was in 1908 still maintained in Delaware, and whipping continued to be prescribed as a punishment for a variety of offences, although in 1889 a law was passed which prescribed that " hereafter no female convicted of any crime in this state shall be whipped or made to stand in the pillory," and a law passed in 1883 prescribed that " in case of conviction of larceny, when the prisoner is of tender years, or is charged for the first time (being shown to have before had a good character), the court may in its discretion omit from the sentence the infliction of lashes."
The rule laid down by the Order is abstinence so far as possible from all foods which are obtained by the cruel infliction of pain, and the minimum that is set is complete "abstinence from flesh and fowl," while net-caught fish may be used by associate members.
Coercion and intimidation slowly came to be leading ideas, the infliction of a lesser penalty than the capital.