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File 3, pages 31-52 —31 Mr. Jones. —Idolatry (and covetousness is idolatry) is no more than a violation of the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me;” and if the State can forbid the violation of the third commandment and the fourth, why may it not forbid the violation of the first and the second, and in that case supplant God at once, and establish an earthly theocracy? That is the only logical outcome. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.1} Senator Blair. —Covetousness is a state of mind; but when it becomes practice by stealing —taking from another without consideration —the law interferes. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.2} Mr. Jones. —Certainly. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.3} Senator Palmer. —There is an infection in blasphemy or in covetousness. For instance, if one covetous man in a neighborhood should infuse the whole neighborhood with covetousness to such an extent that all would become thieves, then covetousness would be a proper subject of legislation. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.4} Mr. Jones. —Never! You forbid the theft, not the covetousness. You cannot invade the condition of mind in which lies the covetousness. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.5} Senator Blair. —We do not say that we must invade the condition of mind; but society has a right to make regulations, because those regulations are essential to the good of society. Society by a major vote establishes a regulations, and we have to obey what is settled by the majority. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.6} Mr. Jones. —How shall it be discovered what is blasphemy, as it is only an offense against God? In the Puritan Theocracy of New England, our historian, Bancroft, says that “the highest offense in the catalogue of crimes was blasphemy, or what a jury should call blasphemy.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.7} Senator Blair. —But the law was behind the jury, and said that the practice should be punished. If a —32 jury of twelve men said that one had committed the overt act, then it could be punished. It was the majority who made the law, and the jury only found the question of fact after the law had been violated. The jury did not make the law. This is a question as to making the law. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 31.8} Mr. Jones. —It is not wholly a question only of making the law. The question is whether the law is right when it is made. There is a limit to the lawmaking power; and that limit is the line which Jesus Christ has drawn. The government has no right to make any law relating to the things that pertain to God, or offenses against God, or religion. It has nothing to do with religion. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 32.1} Blasphemy, according to Judge Cooley, in his “Constitutional Limitations,” “is purposely using words concerning the Supreme Being, calculated and designed to impair and destroy the reverence, respect, and confidence due to him, as the intelligent Creator, Governor, and Judge of the world; . . . a bad motive must exist; there must be a willful, malicious attempt to lessen men’s reverence for the Deity, or for the accepted religion.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 32.2} It is seen at a glance that this comes from the old English system of statutes regulating “offenses against God and religion.” That is where this statute is placed in every system of civil law; it could not be placed anywhere else. But offenses against God are to be answered for only at his tribunal; and with religion, or offenses against it, the civil power has nothing to do. It is a perversion of the functions of civil government to have it made a party to religious controversies. It will have ample exercise for its power and jurisdiction to keep religious disputants as well as other people civil, —33 without allowing itself ever to become a partisan in religious disputes and the conservator of religious dogmas. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 32.3} But according to Judge Cooley’s definition, blasphemy is an attempt to lessen men’s reverence, not only for the Deity, but for “the accepted religion’ as well. But any man in this wide world has the right to lessen men’s reverence for the accepted religion, if he thinks that religion to be wrong. Consequently, as I said a moment ago, that which would be counted blasphemy here would not be counted blasphemy in China; and that which is in the strictest accordance with the word of God and the faith of Jesus Christ here, is necessarily blasphemy in China, or in Turkey, or in Russia. A man who preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ in China commits blasphemy under this definition. He does make a willful attempt to lesson men’s reverence for their accepted religion, and for the deities recognized in their religion. He had to do so, if he is ever to get them to believe in Christ and the religion of Christ. He has to bring them to the place where they will have no reverence for their deities or for their accepted religion, before they ever can accept the religion of Jesus Christ. It is the same way in Turkey, or any other Mohammedan country, or any heathen country. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached in any Mohammedan or heathen country, it is blasphemy under this definition, because its sole object is not only to lesson men’s reverence for their deities and for their accepted religion, but to turn them wholly from it, and if possible to obliterate it from their minds. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 33.1} It is so likewise in Russia. Anybody there who speaks against the accepted religion, or against the saints, or their images, is subject to the penalty of blasphemy, which is banishment for life to Siberia. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 33.2} —34 But if blasphemy be a proper subject of legislation by civil government, if it be right for a government to make itself the “defender of the faith,” then it is perfectly proper for the laws of China to prohibit under whatever penalty it pleases, the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ within the Chinese dominions; because its effect is to lesson men’s reverence for the deities recognized by China, and for the accepted religion of the county. It is the same way in any of the other countries named. And in that case there is no such thing as persecution on account of religion. The only persecutions that have ever been, were because of men’s speaking against the accepted religion. If this principle be correct, then the Roman empire did perfectly right in prohibiting under penalty of death the preaching of the religion of Jesus Christ. Whenever Paul, or any of his brethren, spoke in the Roman empire, they blasphemed according to the Roman law. They were held as blasphemers, and were put to death under the very principle of this definition, which is the principle of the American statutes on the subject of blasphemy. The Christians had to tell the Roman empire that the Roman gods were no gods. They had to tell the Roman empire that the genius of Rome itself, which the Roman system held to be the supreme deity, was not such; but that it was subordinate, and that there was a higher idea of God and of right than the Roman empire or the Roman law knew anything of. They did speak deliberately against the chief deity of Rome, and all the gods of Rome. They did it with the express purpose of destroying reverence for them and for the accepted religion. Rome put them to death. And I repeat, if the principle of the American statutes against blasphemy is correct, then Rome did right. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 34.1} —35 To make this clearer, I quote a passage from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in defense of this principle, in a decision upon this very subject, which says: “To prohibit the open, public, and explicit denial of the popular religion of a country, is a necessary measure to preserve the tranquility of a government.” That is precisely what the Roman empire did. Christianity did openly, publicly, and explicitly deny the popular religion of the country. It did it with intent to destroy men’s reverence for the deities and the religion of that country. Rome prohibited it; and upon the principle of the decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which is the principle of American law on blasphemy, Rome did right, and Christianity was a blaspheming religion. The principle of this decision seems to be that those who represent the popular religion of a country have so little of the real virtue of the religion which they profess, that if anybody speaks against it, it is sure to rouse their combativeness to such a degree as to endanger the public tranquility. Therefore, in order to keep civil those who represent the popular religion, the State must forbid anybody to deny that religion. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 35.1} This decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is one of the grand precedents that have been followed in all the later decisions upon this subject in the younger States; but this decision itself followed one by Chief Justice Kent of the Supreme Court of New York in 1811, in which the embodies the same principles. He defends the right of the State to punish such offenses against what he calls a Christian people, and not equally to punish like offenses against the religion of other people in this country, by the following argument:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 35.2} —36 “Nor are we bound by any expressions in the Constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mohammed, or of the Grand Llama, and for this plain reason: that the case assumes that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 36.1} This is only to argue that if the morality of the country were engrafted upon the religion of Mohammed or the Grand Llama, and Christians were to speak against and deny that accepted religion, it would be proper that the State should punish those Christians for so doing. If that principle be correct, then a Mohammedan country has the right to prohibit the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ within its limits. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 36.2} According to these decisions, Luther and the reformers of his day were blasphemers. The penalty was death, in many cases at the stake, yet under this principle the State did right to put them to death in whatever way the law prescribed; because they did certainly make an open, public, and explicit denial of the popular religion of every country in which they lived, and of all Europe; and if the words of Luther were used to-day in any Catholic country, they would be counted as blasphemous, as a willful and malicious reviling of the accepted religion. The reformers did hold up to ridicule and contempt the popular religion of all Europe. They did right, too; and when the State punished them, it was but carrying out the principles upheld by Chancellor Kent and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and all the other States that have legislated on the subject of religion. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 36.3} As I have already stated, it was upon this principle precisely that the Roman empire forbade the preaching —37 of the gospel the Christ. It only forbade an open, public, and explicit denial of the popular religion of the country, yet in forbidding that, it forbade the preaching of the gospel of Christ. But Christ sent forth his disciples to preach the gospel to every creature, and they did it in the face of the Roman law, and in opposition to the whole power of the Roman empire; and everybody in all the world has an undeniable right to make an open, public, and explicit denial of the popular religion of this country, or any other, if he thinks that religion to be wrong. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 36.4} The principle of these decisions and of the civil statutes against blasphemy, is essentially a pagan principle, and not a Christian principle. It is peculiarly appropriate, therefore, that Chief Justice Kent not only cited the precedents of the church-and-state principles of the colonies and of the British government, but appealed to the pagan governments of antiquity and the papal institutions of modern Europe, as the basis of his decision. It is true that all these nations have set themselves up as the special guardians of their deities, and have prohibited the denial of the popular religion; and it is equally true that all these nations have resisted every step in enlightenment and progress that has ever been made in the march of time. Every step forward in religion and in enlightenment has of necessity been taken in the face of all the opposition which these States and empires could bring to bear. But the principles of American institutions are neither pagan nor papal. The principles of the American Constitution which forbids legislation on the subject of religion, are Christian principles. And it is strictly in order for Supreme Courts in making decisions in behalf of what they boast of as the Christian religion, to base their decision upon something else than the course of —38 the pagan governments of antiquity, and the papal institutions of modern Europe. Upon such a subject it would seem to be proper for them to refer to the teachings and the principles of the Author of Christianity, but singularly enough, it has never been done, and doubtless for the very good reason that it never can be done; for the teachings of Jesus Christ are directly against it. His word forbids civil government to have anything to do with what pertains to God. And instead of teaching his disciples to prosecute, to fine, and to punish by civil law those who speak against them or their religion, he says, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” How can men be brought to respect God or Jesus Christ by civil penalties upon their bodies and goods? How can they respect the religion of men who are ready to prosecute and imprison them? Every principle of the thing is contrary both to the spirit and the letter of Christianity. The religion of Jesus Christ properly exemplified in the daily lives of those who profess it, is the best argument and the strongest defense against blasphemy, both as defined by the Scriptures and by the civil statutes. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 37.1} Laws, therefore, prohibiting “what a jury may call blasphemy,” are pagan, and not Christian. The decisions of the Supreme Courts of New York and Pennsylvania upon this subject are pagan decisions, and not Christian; they are based upon pagan precedents, not Christian. The deadly persecutions of all history, pagan, papal, and so-called Protestant, are justified in these decisions. Michael Servetus was burnt for “blasphemy.” The only use that ever has been, or ever is, made of any such laws in any country, is to give some —39 religious bigots who profess the popular religion, an opportunity to vent their wrath upon persons who disagree with them. Any man who really possesses the religion of Christ will have enough of the grace of God to keep him from endangering the public tranquility when his religion is spoken against. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 38.1} Therefore, I say that we are opposed to all laws of civil government against blasphemy, not because blasphemy is not wrong, but because it is a wrong of that kind with which civil government has nothing to do; and in this we stand wholly upon Christian principle. We stand exactly where the early Christians stood; for, I say again, when Paul spoke in the Roman empire, he was blaspheming, according to the law, was held as a blasphemer and an atheist, and was put to death as such, under the very principle upon which the American laws of blasphemy are sustained. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.1} Senator Blair. —The law was wrong, you say? {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.2} Mr. Jones. —Certainly the law was wrong. The Roman law was that no man should have particular gods of his own, —gods not recognized by the Roman law. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.3} Senator Blair. —That law was not for the good of society? {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.4} Mr. Jones. —No, sir. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.5} Senator Blair. —Certainly it was not. Then you have to repeal the law or obey it. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.6} Mr. Jones. —It ought to be repealed. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.7} Senator Blair. —During these eighteen hundred years we have contrived to repeal that law; but here comes an intelligent people who have evolved among themselves, as the result of a thousand or fifteen hundred years of history, among other things, the institution of the Christian Sabbath, by writing it in the —40 laws of every State in this country, so that the whole American people made up of communities or States, have enacted the principle of this law. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 39.8} Mr. Jones. —The same principle is under the bill before the Committee. There is the same principle under it all. If you can legislate in regard to the Sabbath, you can legislate in regard to blasphemy; you can legislate in regard to idolatry, and every other offense against God, as did both the Puritan and the papal theocracy. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.1} Senator Blair. —You deny the right of the majority, in other words, to make a law in conformity with which the whole shall practice in society? {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.2} Mr. Jones. —I deny the right of any civil government to make any law respecting anything that pertains to man’s relationship to his God, under the first four of the ten commandments. I wish right here to show further that this is not only the principle of the word of Jesus Christ, but also of the American Constitution. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.3} Before Christianity was preached in the world, the Roman empire had among its laws these statutes:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.4} “1. No man shall have for himself particular gods of his own; no man shall worship by himself any new or foreign gods, unless they are recognized by the public laws. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.5} “2. Worship the gods in all respects according to the laws of your country, and compel all others to do the same. But hate and punish those who would introduce anything whatever alien to our customs in this particular. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.6} “3. Whoever introduces new religions, the tendency and character of which are unknown, whereby the minds of men may be disturbed, shall, if belonging to the higher rank, be banished; if to the lower, punished with death.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 40.7} —41 The Christians did have a particular God of their own, not recognized by the Roman law. They did introduce a new religion. The Roman empire enforced the law, and that is why the Christians were put to death. If things pertaining to God be a proper subject of legislation by civil government, then no Christian was ever persecuted, and there has never been persecution in this world. All the Roman empire did in killing Christians was to enforce the law. Then the question was with the Christians, at that time, and the question is with us, Is not the law wrong? and did not the Christians have the right to attack the law? That is what they did. When a Christian was brought before the magistrate, a dialogue followed something like this:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.1} Magistrate. —“Have you a particular God of your own, —a god not recognized by the Roman law?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.2} Christian. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.3} M. —“Did you not know that the law is against it?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.4} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.5} M. —“Have you not introduced a new religion?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.6} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.7} M. —“Did you not know that the law is against it?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.8} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.9} M. —“Did you not know that the penalty is death, for those of the lower ranks?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.10} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.11} M. —“You are of the lower ranks?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.12} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.13} M. —“You have introduced a new religion?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.14} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.15} M. —“You have a God of your own?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.16} C. —“Yes.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.17} M. —“What is the penalty?” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.18} C. —“Death.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.19} That was all. The Romans enforced the law upon the Christians in the first days of Christianity; and there was no persecution in it, if the principle be recognized —42 that civil government has a right to legislate in religious things. The empire had this apparent advantage, too, that the law existed before Christianity was known in the world. Christianity appeared to Rome as nothing else than an uprising against the imperial power. Laws are made to be enforced; and to enforce the law is all that the Roman empire ever did, whether up to the time of Constantine, or at any other time. In fact, all the papacy did in the Middle Ages was to have the emperors enforce the law. We stand to-day just where the Christians did at that time; we come to the root of the whole matter, and deny the right of the civil government to legislate on anything that pertains to our duties to God under the first four commandments, and assert the Christian and American principle that every man has the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 41.20} The principle that the Christians asserted was to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to deny the right of Caesar to demand anything that pertains to God. They gave their lives in support of that principle, against the law of the Roman empire, and against the very existence of the Roman empire. This principle was asserted and maintained until it forced the Roman empire, with all its power, to recognize the right of every man to have a particular god of his own, and to worship that god as he chose. The Roman empire did come in the days of Constantine and Licinius to that point. At the death of Galerius, it was decreed in the Roman law, by the emperors Constantine and Licinius in the Edict of Milan, that every man should be at liberty to have any god he pleased, and worship him as he pleased. But it was the Christian principle that forced the Roman empire to that point in the face of all its laws and institutions of ages. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 42.1} —43 Our national Constitution embodies the very principle announced by Jesus Christ, that the civil government shall have nothing to do with religion, or with what pertains to God; but shall leave that to every man’s conscience and his God. As long as he is a good citizen, the nation will protect him and leave him perfectly free to worship whom he pleases, when he pleases, as he pleases, or not to worship at all, if he pleases. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 43.1} In Article VI. of the Constitution of the United States, this nation says that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” By an amendment making more certain the adoption of the principle, it declares in the first amendment to the Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This first amendment was adopted in 1789, by the first Congress that ever met under the Constitution. In 1796 a treaty was made with Tripoli, in which it was declared (Article II.) that “the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” This treaty was framed by an ex-Congregationalist clergyman, and was signed by President Washington. It was not out of disrespect to religion or Christianity that these clauses were placed in the Constitution, and that this one was inserted in that treaty. On the contrary, it was entirely on account of their respect for religion, and the Christian religion in particular, as being beyond the province of civil government, pertaining solely to the conscience, and resting entirely between the individual and God. This fact is so well stated by Mr. Bancroft in his “History of the Constitution of the United States,” that I will here insert it:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 43.2} —44 “In the earliest States known to history, government and religion were one and indivisible. Each State had its special deity, and often these protectors, one after another, might be overthrown in battle, never to rise again. The Peloponnesian War grew out of a strife about an oracle. Rome, as it sometimes adopted into citizenship those whom it vanquished, introduced in like manner, and with good logic for that day, the worship of their gods. No one thought of vindicating religion for the conscience of the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity, by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Caesar only that which is Caesar’s. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the gospel for all men. No sooner was this religion adopted by the chief of the Roman empire, than it was shorn of its character of universality, and enthralled by an unholy connection with the unholy State; and so it continued till the new nation, —the least defiled with the barren scoffings of the eighteenth century, the most general believer in Christianity of any people of that age, the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest forms, —when it came to establish a government for the United States, refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 44.1} “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 of God 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 and purity and power.” —Last chapter. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 44.2} At this point I am brought to the assertion of the second of the principles upon which we stand in our —45 opposition to Sunday laws, or any other form of religious legislation: that is, the principle of the Constitution of the United States; and upon this principle I maintain that this proposed Sunday law is unconstitutional. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 44.3} The object of this Sunday bill is wholly religious. The last section shows the object of the entire bill; and that is, “to secure to the whole people rest, . . . and the religious observance of the Sabbath day.” No one, therefore, need attempt to evade the force of objections against this bill by saying that it is not the religious, but the civil, observance of the day that is required; because it is plainly declared in the bill itself, that it is not only to secure rest to all the people, but that it is also to secure the religious observance of the Sabbath day. There is not a single reference in the bill to any such thing as the civil observance of the day. The word civil is not used in the bill. It is a religious bill wholly. The title of the bill declares that its object is to secure to the people the enjoyment of the Lord’s day as a day of rest, “and to promote its observance as a day of religious worship.” The first section defines the Lord’s day; the second section refers to the day as one of worship and rest; the third section refers to it as a day of religious worship; the fourth section refers to its observance as that of religious worship; and the sixth section plainly declares, what is apparent throughout, that the object of the bill is “to secure to the whole people rest, . . . and the religious observance of the Sabbath day,” on the first day of the week. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 45.1} It is the religious observance of the day that its promoters, from one end of the land to the other, have in view. In the convention, now in session in this city, —46 working in behalf of this bill, only yesterday Dr. Crafts said:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 45.2} “Taking religion out of the day, takes the rest out.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.1} In the “Boston Monday Lectures,” 1887, Joseph Cook, lecturing on the subject of Sunday laws, said:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.2} “The experience of centuries shows, however, that you will in vain endeavor to preserve Sunday as a day of rest, unless you preserve it as a day of worship. Unless Sabbath observance be founded upon religious reasons, you will not long maintain it at a high standard on the basis of economic and physiological and political considerations only.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.3} And in the Illinois State Sunday convention held in Elgin, Nov. 8. 1887, Dr. W. W. Everts declared Sunday to be “the test of all religion.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.4} Sunday is a religious institution wholly; Sunday legislation, wherever found, is religious legislation solely; and this bill does not in its terms pretend to be anything else than religious. Being therefore as it is, religious legislation, it is clearly unconstitutional. In proof of this, I submit the following considerations:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.5} All the powers of Congress are delegated powers. It has no other power; it cannot exercise any other. Article X. of Amendments of the Constitution expressly declares that— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.6} “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.7} In all the powers thus delegated to Congress, there is no hint of any power to legislate upon any religious question, or in regard to the observance of any religious institution or rite. Therefore, this Sunday bill, being a religious bill, is unconstitutional; and any legislation with regard to it will be unconstitutional. Sunday being —47 a religious institution, any legislation by Congress in regard to its observance, will be unconstitutional as long as the United States Constitution shall remain as it now is. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 46.8} Nor is this all. The nation has not been left in doubt as to whether the failure to delegate this power was or was not intentional. The first amendment to the Constitution, in declaring that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” shows that the failure to delegate such power was intentional, and makes the intention emphatic by absolutely prohibiting Congress from exercising any power with regard to religion. It is impossible to frame a law on the subject of religion that will not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Therefore the first amendment to the Constitution absolutely prohibits Congress from ever making any law with regard to any religious subject, or the observance of any religious rite or institution. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 47.1} More than this, the National Reform Association knows, and has been contending for twenty-five years, that for Congress to make any Sunday laws would be unconstitutional. Yet the National Reform Association is one of the most prominent agencies in urging forward this bill; and the Secretary of that Association stood at this table to-day to plead for its passage. And this only shows that they are willing knowingly to resort to unconstitutional means to secure their coveted power, and to accomplish their purposes. As for Dr. Crafts and his fellow-workers, whether or not they know it to be unconstitutional, we do not know. In the announcements of the national Sunday-law convention now (Dec. 11-13, 1888) being held in this city, it was stated that the church in which the convention was to meet would —48 be festooned with the names of six millions of petitioners; but at the beginning of the first meeting it was stated that there were fourteen millions of them. A question was sent up asking how the number could have grown so much larger so suddenly. Mrs. Bateham was recalled to the platform to answer the question, and when she answered it, the cause of such a sudden and enormous growth was explained by the fact that Cardinal Gibbons had written a letter indorsing the bill, and solely upon the strength of his name, seven million two hundred thousand Catholics were counted as petitioners. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 47.2} This was not a complete answer to the question, because the Cardinal’s letter does not authorize any such use of it as they have made, at least so much of it as was made public does not. The whole of the letter was not made public there, because, Dr. Crafts said, it was for the Senate Committee. It was laid on the table here to-day. But so much of it as was read merely referred to the action of the Baltimore Council in commanding a stricter observance of Sunday, and said:— {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 48.1} “I am most happy to add my name to those of the millions of others who are laudably contending against the violation of the Christian Sabbath by unnecessary labor, and who are endeavoring to promote its decent and proper observance by judicious legislation.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 48.2} This was all. He said, “I am happy to add my name,” etc. He did not say that he added, or that he wished to add, seven million two hundred thousand others with his name, or in his name; yet this was done. But it was not so much to be wondered at, because the same principle had been acted upon before throughout the country, and when five hundred petitioners could be made out of one hundred, and two hundred —49 and forty thousand out of two hundred and forty, it was perfectly easy and entirely consistent to make seven million two hundred thousand and one out of one. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 48.3} This thing was perfectly consistent also with the principle in another point. The petition reads: “We, the undersigned, adult residents of the United States, twenty-one years of age or more, hereby petition,” etc. In counting these seven million two hundred thousand petitioners in behalf of the Sunday law, they thereby certified that all these were Catholics “twenty-one years of age or more.” But there was not a man in that convention, and there is not a woman in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, who does not know that there are not that many Catholics in the United States “twenty-one years of age or more.” They virtually certified that all the Catholics in the United States are “twenty-one years of age or more,” for they distinctly announced that “all the Roman Catholics” were petitioning for the Sunday law. But as they had virtually certified the same thing of the Protestant churches throughout the country, why should they not go on and swing in “all the Roman Catholics” in the same way? They could do the one just as honestly as they could do the other. When men and women professing themselves to be Protestant Christians will do such things as that to carry the Catholic Church with them, it is not to be wondered at if they should be willing to resort to unconstitutional means to make their religious zeal effective in national law. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 49.1} Senator Blair. —Then you assume that this bill and all Sunday laws concern only the relation of man to God, and not the relation of men to each other? {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 49.2} Mr. Jones. —Yes, sir, that is the principle upon which we stand. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 49.3} —50 Senator Blair. —Right there I find fault with your original proposition. You have got to establish, before you can defeat the ground of Sunday laws, that Sunday laws are not for the good of Caesar; that is, not for the good of society. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 50.1} Mr. Jones. —I have not had time to prove that yet. I will prove fully that Sunday laws are not for the good of anybody. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 50.2} Senator Blair. —Come to the point as soon as you can. That is the point in this case, as between you and the law proposed to be enacted. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 50.3} Mr. Jones. —Very good. For the State to compel men to do no work is to enforce idleness. Idleness is the root of unlimited evil. It is a true proverb that we learned in our boyhood, “Satan always finds something for idle hands to do.” In this world, to compel men to be idle is to force them into a line of influences and temptations which in the very nature of things can end only in evil. It is well known, and it is one of the principal grounds of the complaints of those who are working for Sunday laws, that Sunday is, of all the week, the day of the most wickedness; that the record of crime and violence on Sunday exceeds that of any other day of the week, especially in large cities. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 50.4} Dr. Crafts refers constantly to London as an exemplary city in the matter of enforced Sunday laws, but the fact was brought out last spring by a member of this Committee —Senator Payne— that the statement had lately been “made on authority, that London on Sunday is the most immoral and dissipated city in the world.” Now why is this? They argue that it is because the saloons are open on Sunday. But the saloons are open every other day of the week. Then the saloons being open no more on Sunday than on any —51 other day, why is it that there is so much more violence done on Sunday than on other days of the week? —It is because more men are idle on Sunday than on any other day of the week. Upon this point I quote an extract from the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette of March 10, 1888. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 50.5} “They declare Sunday the moral ruin of the people. They prove it by alleged statistics of criminal prosecutions to show that more crimes of violence are committed on Sunday than on all other days of the week. Why is this? Because the saloons are open? —They are open on other days. This reduces them to the sole reason that it is because it is a day of idleness. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 51.1} “Their argument is absolutely destructive to the beneficence of the custom of a rest day. They continually affirm that a Sabbath day is the very foundation of religion, morals, and society, and they as incessantly declare that the custom of Sunday cessation from work in the cities had made it a day of moral ruin. What is their recourse from the destruction which they charge upon the day of idleness? —To make statutes more stringent to enforce idleness. Arguing that idleness on that day leads mankind to moral ruin, they call for a more rigid enforcement of idleness, to lead mankind to the ways of salvation. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 51.2} “Surely there is need to revise their basis in season before they can proceed rationally in legislation. Selling beer is no more a sin on Sunday than on other days. The reason why more crimes of violence are done on Sunday than on other days —if that is a fact— is not that the saloons are open, but that the men are idle. The good of a day of rest for the toilers has to be taken with the drawback of this unavoidable evil from idleness and indulgences of appetites. The cause is the cessation of vocations.” {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 51.3} This argument is entirely sound. We submit to the consideration of any candid mind that it would be far better to allow men to follow their honest occupations —52 on Sunday as they do on other days of the week, than to compel them to be idle, and thus forcibly throw them into the way of all the temptations and evil that beset men in this world. No State, therefore, can ever afford for its own good to enact laws making idleness compulsory, as Sunday laws do. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 51.4} More than this, to prohibit men from following their honest occupations at any time, under penalties of fine or imprisonment, or perhaps both, is for the State to relegate honest occupations to the realm of crime and put a premium upon idleness and recklessness. It is well known that in many localities if a man will only be idle on Sunday, he can run into all sorts of dissipation and wickedness to any extent, except that of down-right violence, without any fear of prosecution or penalty of any kind. But if any quiet, industrious citizen chooses to engage in his honest occupation, —going quietly about his own business on his own premises on Sunday, —he is subjected to prosecution, to a penalty of a heavy fine, and perhaps imprisonment. This is nothing else than to put a premium upon wickedness. No State can afford to make crimes of honest occupations. No State can afford to put such a premium upon idleness and all its attendant wickedness. {1889 ATJ, NSLS18 52.1} All these complaints of evil and violence and wickedness on Sunday, so enlarged upon by the people who are working for Sunday laws, is an open confession that wickedness is the effect of enforced idleness, and this in itself is the strongest argument that can be offered against the very things for which they plead. The States of the Union have all these years been sowing the wind in this very thing, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. And, worse than all, they propose to |
