THE following is an extract from a speech delivered by the editor of this paper before the House Committee on the District of Columbia, February 18, 1890:—
There is another consideration in this which shows that the State will be compelled to take official and judicial cognizance of the conscientious beliefs and observances of the people. It is this: When a law is enacted compelling everybody to refrain from all labor or business on Sunday, excepting those who conscientiously believe in and observe another day, then there will be scores of men who know that in their business—saloons, for instance—they can make more money by keeping their places of business open on Sunday than on another day, because more men are idle that day. They will therefore profess to observe another day and run their business on Sunday. This is not simply a theory, it is a fact proved by actual examples. One of the very latest I will mention. I have here a clipping from the Southern Sentinel, of Dallas, Texas, February 4, 1890, which I read:—
Right here in Dallas we have an example of how the law can be evaded. Parties have leased the billiard hall of the new McLeod Hotel, and have stipulated in their lease that they are conscientious observers of the seventh day [though to the best of the common knowledge and belief they are not]; that, in consequence, their business house will be closed on Saturday, and will be open on Sunday.
Mr. Grout—If they are known not to be conscientious worshipers, and keepers of the seventh-day Sabbath, what defense would they have?
Mr. Jones—The defense would still be a claim of “conscientious belief in, and observance of, another day.” The claim indeed might not be sincere. And if there were any question of it in the community, it would certainly be disputed and the court would be called upon to decide. Thus you see that by this bill the United States courts will be driven to the contemplation of conscientious convictions and compelled to decide upon the sincerity of conscientious beliefs and observances. And thereby it is proved that the introduction and advocacy of this bill is an endeavor to commit Congress and the Government of the United States to the supervision of the conscientious convictions of the people.
Now, gentlemen, to prevent this was the very purpose of the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is well known, as I have stated, that the Colonies which formed the original thirteen States had each one an established religion. When it was proposed to organize a Federal Government, the strongest influence that had to be met and overcome was jealousy of a national power—a fear that a national power would override the powers and interfere with the domestic affairs of the States. It was this that caused the adoption of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Their affairs of religion and the exercise thereof being the dearest of all, are first assured protection. Fearing that the national government might enact laws which would restrict or prohibit the free exercise of the religion of any of the people of the States; or that it might adopt or indorse some one of the religious establishments of the States, and thus form an alliance which might annihilate both political and religious individuality; that the political individuality of the States and the religious individuality of the people might be free; for themselves and their posterity the people declared that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
It is not to be inquired whether there was any danger of that which they feared, they feared it and that is enough. And because they feared it, because they were so jealous—rightly jealous too—of their religious rights and conscientious convictions, they guarded these, as they intended and supposed, forever, from any supervision or cognizance whatever on the part of the national Government. And upon this I quote now more fully the words of Bancroft, to which I merely referred a little while ago:—
Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the new Nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained in Judea.
It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the Federal Government the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the sanctuary of the soul; and, not from indifference, but that the infinite spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom of purity and power.—History of the Formation of the Constitution, Book V, chapter I.190
Thus says the historian, there is by the Constitution “perfect individuality extended to conscience.” This individuality, these rights, are as dear to us and as sacred as they were to the fathers of our Nation, yet no more so to us than to other people. Therefore, gentlemen of the committee and the representatives of the people, by your respect for the Constitution and your oath to support it, and in behalf of the sacred rights of all the people, we implore you to give no heed to any demand for legislation, which in any way, to the least degree, proposes to touch the conscientious beliefs or observances of a solitary individual in all the land; give no heed to this bill, which in its very terms, proposes to commit Congress to the supervision of conscientious beliefs, and proposes to drive the national power into a field where the makers of that power forbade it to go, and to compel it to assume jurisdiction of questions which they have forbidden it even to consider.
Now, as to the petition—their petition I mean (our petition is all right, that needs no defense), the petition which the other side is circulating—that petition shows what this bill means. Both this bill and the Senate bill, “which includes this,” were framed and introduced upon this petition. If we know what the petition asks for, we shall know also what the bills are intended to give. Here is the petition—I read the one for the national law, “which includes this.”
To the House of Representatives of the United States:—
The undersigned organizations and adult residents (21 years of age or more) of the United States hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to pass a bill forbidding in the United States mail and military service, and in interstate commerce, and in the District of Columbia and the Territories, all Sunday traffic and work, except works of religion.
The question then which would inevitably arise upon this is, What religion is it whose works of religion only shall be excepted? That question would have to be answered. It would have to be answered by the United States courts or by Congress. But whenever, or by whichever, it shall be answered, when it is answered, that moment you have an established religion—a union of Church and State. You cannot go back if you take the first step. The last step is in the first one, and we beg of you, gentlemen of the committee, and of these men themselves, for their own sakes as well as ours, do not take the first step.
We all know that the most wickedly cruel and most mercilessly inconsiderate of all governments is that in which the ecclesiastics control the civil power. And how are you going to escape it under such laws as here proposed? Who is to enforce these Sunday laws? Who, indeed, but those who are working for them? Certainly those who are opposed to them, or indifferent about them, will not enforce them. Who then are they who are working for the enactment of these laws? Who organize the conventions and count out the opposite votes? Who appeared here before your committee to argue in favor of it? Who, indeed, but the Church managers? for you saw how summarily the Knights of Labor part of the delegation was squelched.
Well, then, if it is the Church which secures the enactment of the law, it will be the Church that will have to see to the enforcement of the law. In order to do this she will be compelled to have police and courts which will do her bidding. This is her great difficulty now. There is now no lack of Sunday laws, either in the States or the Territories, but the laws are not enforced. In order to get executives and police and courts who will enforce the law to her satisfaction, the Church will have to elect them. Then, as said Mr. Crafts in this city the other day, they will form “law and order leagues to enforce” the Sunday laws. Here then is the system: The Church combines to get the law enacted; the Church secures the election of officers who will do her bidding; the Church forms “law and order leagues” to make sure that the officers do her bidding and enforce the law. Where, then, will the State appear, but in the subordinate position to formulate and execute the will of the Church? Then you have the Church above the State, the ecclesiastical superior to the civil power. This is just what is in this national Sunday-law movement; and this is what will certainly come out of it. It is inherent there.
But when George III. undertook to make the military superior to the civil power, our liberty-loving fathers declared it tyranny and avowed such things should not be in this land. And now when a movement reaches the national Capitol which bears in itself an attempt to make the ecclesiastical superior to the civil power, it is time for the American people to declare that this is tyranny also, and resolve that no such thing shall be in this land. That attempt one hundred and fourteen years ago grew out of the “divine right of kings” to govern, and the doctrine that governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This attempt now grows out of the divine right of the ecclesiastics to govern, and likewise that governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The President of the American Sabbath Union, which is the originator of this national Sunday-law scheme, has definitely declared in so many words that “governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;” and one of the secretaries of an auxiliary Union has as definitely stated that “this movement is an effort to change that feature of our fundamental law.”
Gentlemen, when such doctrines as these are openly avowed, and when such an attempt as this is made by those who avow them, to embody them in national law, it is time for all the people to declare as we decidedly do, that this Nation is, and of right ought to be,FREE AND INDEPENDENT OF ALL ECCLESIASTICAL OR RELIGIOUS CONNECTION, INTERFERENCE, OR CONTROL.
A Modern Inquisitor.
WHAT a perfectly inquisitorial disposition Census Superintendent Porter must have! First, he commissions the enumerator to inquire into the financial difficulties, the private defects, and secret diseases of all the people, with the idea of compelling answers under penalty of one hundred dollars. When he found this could not be made to work, he then undertook to get the physicians all over the country to violate their professional oaths and betray professional confidences, by revealing the private diseases and secret maladies of all their patients. Since he found that the physicians of the country were men too honorable to stoop to such shameful dealing, he now directs that where the persons themselves refuse to answer these wickedly hatched questions, the enumerator “should obtain the information by inquiry from neighbors, and enter it upon his schedule the same as if obtained from the head or some member of the family.” No doubt Mr. Porter, by this last effort, will obtain a host of information. In many instances “neighbors” know more about other people than those people know about themselves, and are ready to tell it. But anybody who would trust such “information” would have to be of as remarkable disposition as is the author of this inquisition himself. We doubt whether the records of the Papacy contain the names of a person more perfectly qualified for the office of Inquisitor-General than this record shows Census Superintendent Robert P. Porter to be.
Selfish and Tyrannical.
By J. G. Clark
The proposed religious legislation as embodied in the Blair-Crafts-Breckinridge Sunday bigotry, is “not dead but sleeping,” and will no doubt bob up serenely at the beginning of every new session of Congress. It is really an indirect confession on the part of its advocates that they are losing faith in the invincible power of love in the conquest of the world.
But it is not “religion, pure and undefiled before the Father,” but ecclesiasticism which is foremost and uppermost in this Sunday-law crusade. The former is always tolerant—“not puffed up”—and is ever ready to fulfill the golden rule, while the latter is always selfish and tyrannical, according to power and opportunity, and disposed to control the human conscience by force.
It is strange that professed followers of Christ should forget the lines defined and ordered by the Founder of our religion, and appeal to the State to aid them with its fines and prisons in the spread of religious truths, when the facts are ever before us to prove that in this country, where Church and State have thus far been divorced, Christianity is on a better and more promising footing than it is in any other country on the globe.—J. G. Clark, in Oregonian.
How Do They Use It?
The lessening of the hours of labor may seem to be a very good thing for mechanics, but it is not impossible that in the long run it may be found to work against their interests. A great many persons who are not mechanics, but toil as arduously as any mechanics ever do or did, do not find that they can make a fair living unless they work more than eight hours a day. If the whole wide world can get along upon eight hours a day for toil, and is ready to devote the rest of its time to proper rest and recreation, and to such pursuits as will help to relieve those who engage in them, we wish the eight-hour rule might be established the world over. But the question arises, whether, apart from possible financial difficulties, the reduction of the hours of labor and consequent increase of hours of idleness may not prove in a moral point of view more hurtful than helpful to the laboring classes? Do they use well such leisure as they now have? Or do they use it in a way that suggests that increase of leisure would prove only a curse, and not a blessing?—New York Observer.
A RELIGIOUS paper of Oakland, California, has the following item which contains a thought worth repeating. It says:—
There is published in Santa Cruz, California, a monthly journal called the Buddhist Ray, which boasts of being the first paper of its kind published in a Christian city. It is being circulated in Japan. What is a Christian city? And if a city were Christian, would it publish a Buddhist journal? The doctrine of Christ is, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” The paper has naught of which to boast. Christ would not recognize Santa Cruz as his, any more than he would Yeddo, Oakland, London, or any other city.
THE defeat of what is known as the Bennett law, on a direct issue in Milwaukee, shows the danger of carrying unnecessary proscription into the public schools.—Christian at Work.
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The Boston Committee of One Hundred, taking their cue from the United States Supreme Court decision upon the Mormon test oath, are now urging that the Roman Catholics shall be disfranchised. They declare:—
We do not hesitate to say, as a measure for the Nation's self-preservation, that no man who confesses allegiance to the Pontiff should be allowed to participate, as a citizen, in either holding office, or casting a ballot. The United States Supreme Court has decided that the law of one of our States disfranchising Mormons is constitutional, on the theory that the man who takes the oath the Mormons were required to take cannot be a good citizen. Why should not this principle be applied to those who confess allegiance to the Papal hierarchy? No ballot for the man who takes his politics from the Vatican.
The Committee of One Hundred are not alone in this; there are several papers in different parts of the country that advocate the same measure, and for the same reason. Others advocate the same measure for other reasons. But whether it be this reason or others, the truth is that those who advocate such a proceeding, hold a despotic theory and proceed upon a despotic principle. And if they had the power to execute their wish, the despotism that would thereby be established, would be no less cruel than that which they assert characterizes that which they wish to abolish. That Committee of One Hundred should be annihilated.