urably correct its own evils; and that government without free discussion and expression of public opinion would soon develop into despotism.

The fathers of the Republic held that the same liberty that was guaranteed to religion should be guaranteed to the press, and for this reason they denied Congress, in the First Amendment, the right to abridge the liberty of either. Therefore, if Congress should enact laws restricting the free exercise of religion or abridging the freedom of the press, it would transcend its powers and commit an unconstitutional act. This would be a subversion of principles of justice, and un-American in spirit. A muzzled press is the mere puppet of despotism. God designed America to be the home, not of tyrants and of slaves, but of a free people. Every lover of liberty will raise. his voice in a mighty protest against any movement to muzzle the press so that it cannot print the truth freely and expose the intrigues of any enemy seeking the overthrow of free institutions.

Intrigues of Reactionary Forces The efforts now being made in Congress to restrict the freedom of the press should serve to arouse every lover of liberty to a sense of the danger that threatens our free institutions. The contest is a revival of the old struggle between ecclesiastical power and human liberty. The press bills introduced into Congress by Messrs. Fitzgerald and Siegel aim at nothing less than the transformation of the Post Office Department into an autocratic, despotic bureau, instead of a branch of a free government. Why do these legislators seek to clothe the Postmaster-General with arbitrary

power, to make him not only an absolute censor of the press, but the judge, jury. prosecuting attorney, and sole prosecuting witness; constituting him a whole court in himself, with power to pass judgment upon men's motives and actions without trial, and from whose judgment there shall be no appeal?

When similar bills were before Congress a year ago, we intimated at the hearing before the committee that the authors of these bills either were ignorant of American principles, or were acting under strong pressure to clothe the Postmaster-General with such arbitrary power in the interests of a secret, invisible organization which had sinister designs against our free institutions. This was most emphatically denied by the authors of the bills, as is shown in the official record of the hearing upon these bills

What the Record Reveals

"Mr. Reilly: I would like to ask these gen tlemen if they were urged in any manner by any suggestions coming in any degree from anybody connected with the Catholic Church that these bills which they introduced should be introduced.

"Mr. Gallivan: I desire to refer to the state ment I made in the opening of my remarks. which was that I introduced this bill on my own initiative. I think the committee under stood me clearly on that point." (See page 12 of "Hearing before the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads," Feb. 1, 1915.)

The impression was given by the authors of these bills that they had introduced them on their own initiative, without suggestion from anybody connected in any degree with the Catholic Church. But this denial of Catholic influence by these Congressmen is, in turn denied by the Catholic press.

Catholic Avowal of Catholic Pressure The Committee on Public Morals made the following report to the American Federation of Catholic Societies in their annual meeting at Toledo, Ohio, Aug. 15-17, 1915, as published in the official Bulletin of the federation:

"We regret that the rush of important national legislation prevented action by Congress during the last days of the short term on H. R. Bill No. 20644, intended to shut out from the mails indecent and filthy publications that attack the Catholic Church and its institutions. Spurred to activity by the Brooklyn diocesan federation, Congressman John J. Fitzgerald, of that borough, in January introduced the bill after having failed in a laudable attempt to get relief for Catholics through the regular Post Office Appropriation Bill. Mr. Fitzgerald has promised the Brooklyn federation that he will reintroduce the bill at the next session of Congress.

"Congressman James A. Gallivan, of Massachusetts, introduced a similar bill, but neither bill got out of the committee. For six years the federation appealed to Congressmen for action against commercialized bigotry. In two distinguished members of Congress we found at last men with sufficient bravery not only to denounce the bigots on the floor, but to demand legislation to protect Catholics from the cowardly attacks of enemies, and to end a national disgrace.

'Strange as it may appear to the uninitiated, it does require political courage in public life to champion a Catholic cause. The Guardians of Liberty last fall took away 40,000 votes from a Catholic candidate for governor in New York State. No doubt they now have Fitzgerald and Gallivan on the 'black list.' I trust that federation at this meeting will by appropriate resolution make due acknowledgment to the two Congressmen mentioned for their good work."

A Concerted Plan

A number of Roman Catholic periodicals announced before the present Congress convened that Mr. Fitzgerald was

going to reintroduce his bill, and that Mr. Siegel was going to introduce another bill, which would, if passed, shut out of the mails all anti-Catholic publications. There seemed to be a perfect understanding and foreknowledge on the part of the Knights of Columbus, the American Federation of Catholic Societies, and Catholic periodicals as to the time of the introduction of the present bills by Messrs. Fitzgerald and Siegel. After Mr. Fitzgerald introduced his bill, the Brooklyn Tablet (Roman Catholic) of January 8, said:

The only publications in this country that would come within the pale defined by Congressman Fitzgerald's bill, are those which are attacking the Catholic Church."

Still later this same periodical, which claims to have a circulation of 700,000 copies per issue, announced a most thoroughly organized Catholic campaign soliciting every Catholic family in this country to write letters and send petitions to Congressmen, demanding the passage of these press bills, also stating that an effort would be made to get these bills out of the committee into the open forum of Congress, and that a demand would be made for a division of the votes on the roll call. There is no doubt as to the object sought in such a scheme on the part of Roman Catholics

It is not the policy of LIBERTY magazine to make an attack on the Catholic Church or on Catholic organizations in discussing this great issue now pending before Congress. Many of our stanchest friends are Catholics, and we much dislike to say anything to reflect in any way upon the Catholic Church; but if

silence means to purchase friendship at the sacrifice of free American institutions, right principles, honor, and justice, then the price of peace is too high. We much deplore the fact that our Roman Catholic friends are making this a purely sectarian issue.

What We Fear

We fear that this aggressive campaign on the part of the Catholic Church in America to induce Congress to deprive American citizens of their cherished and blood-bought liberties, will result in a great increase of bitter feeling toward the Catholic hierarchy and Catholic organizations, similar to the feeling at the time. of the great Reformation in Europe, and more recently in other parts of the world. Any encroachments on the part of a foreign power which has alien principles of government, upon the right of the people to rule, will be most bitterly resented and resisted here. Consequently, we deplore the fact that the Catholic Church has made this a denominational issue, and according to the testimony of Catholics themselves has "appealed to Congress

men "for six years" for them "to champion a Catholic cause," thus launching a national campaign to silence "publications that attack the Catholic Church and its institutions."

Let Charity and Equality Prevail Both Protestants and Catholics are alike guilty of abusing the privilege of a free press in heaping ridicule and contempt upon each other and their peculiar doctrines. If a Protestant can endure Catholic abuse through the press under existing American law, why cannot a Catholic be content with equal treatment and privileges?

It seems strange that Catholics want publications shut out of the mails for attacking the Catholic Church, while Catholic publications continue to attack the Protestant church and its institutions. This is inconsistent. Protestants are not appealing to Congressmen to introduce bills to shut Catholic publications out of the mails. They have nothing to fear in a free field. They ask only equal rights. equal opportunities. Why should Roman Catholics ask for special protection'

洽

MORALITY, a morality which is woven into the very fiber of the life, is the ultimate of Christianity. The method employed in the production of this experience is peculiar to the teaching of Jesus Christ, in that it absolutely repudiates physical force.

Compulsory service is infinitely inferior to that which is voluntary, but earnest service will ever spring from the conciliated heart. Morality is of the mind. and heart, hence never can be produced by civil enactment.

Many religionists are zealous for the

enforced observance of Sunday, hoping in this way to add to the morality and the well-being of the whole people. History furnishes at least three interesting experiences in which immorality - not morality - followed in the wake of religion enforced by law.

Christianity's First Legal Recognition

Constantine was the first of the Roman emperors to recognize Christianity, and to enact a law making Sunday observance obligatory on at least a part of the people. Of this law, which was enacted A. D. 321, it is written:

"The first Sunday law, the edict of the emperor Constantine, was the product of that pagan conception, developed by the Romans, which made religion a part of the state. The day was to be venerated as a religious duty owed to the god of the sun. . . . Evidently Constantine was still something of a heathen. As late as the year 409, two rescripts of the emperors, Honorius and Theodosius, indicate that Christians then still generally observed the Sabbath [Saturday, not Sunday]."-Judge Clarke of North Carolina Supreme Court, N. C., Vol. CXXXIV, p. 508.

"That very day was the Sunday of their heathen neighbors and respective countrymen, and patriotism gladly united with expediency in making it at once their Lord's day and their sabbath."- North British Review, Vol. XVIII, p. 409.

"It was the aim of Constantine to make theology a branch of politics; it was the hope of every bishop in the empire to make politics a branch of theology." "The unavoidable consequences were a union between the church and the state."-Draper's "Intellectual Development of Europe," chaps. 9, 10.

Constantine established Christianity as the religion of the empire, and Sunday by law became the day of rest. What were the results? These:

"Contemporaneously with the establishment [of Christianity as the religion of the empire] was the progress of a great and general corruption which had arisen two centuries before. Superstition and ignorance invested the ecclesiastics with a power which they exerted to their own aggrandizement."- White's Universal History, p. 156.

"As the church grew in numbers and wealth, costly edifices were constructed for worship. The services became more elaborate. Sculpture and painting were enlisted in the work of providing aids to devotion. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. Religious observances were multiplied; and the church, under the Christian emperors, with its array of clergy and of imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that had belonged to the heathen system which it had supplanted."-Fisher's "Outlines of Universal History," p. 193.

"Some join us from desire of maintenance, some for preferment: . . . nothing is so rare as a real lover of truth."- The Emperor at Council of Nice to Bishops; Stanley's Lectures on History of the Eastern Church," lec. 5. par. 13 from end.

"The people of God are dispersed by the abounding immoralities and heresies of the day, while no good shepherd appears, to lay down his life for the sheep."- Jerome (A. D. 400). "No language can describe the angry contentions of Christians and the corruption of

CONSTANTINE, AUTHOR OF THE FIRST
SUNDAY LAW

morals that prevailed from the time of Constantine to that of Theodosius."- Chrysostom (A. D. 347-407), Homily on St. Matthew.

Salvianus, of the fifth century, wrote:

"How many may one meet, even in the church, who are not still drunkards, or debauchees, or adulterers, or fornicators, or robbers, or murderers, or the like, or all these at once, without end? . . . If the Saxon is wild,

the Frank faithless, the Goth inhuman, the Alanian drunken, the Hun licentious, they are, by reason of their ignorance, far less punishable than we, who, knowing the commandments of God, commit all these crimes."- Quoted by Schaff, "History of the Christian Church," Vol. III, sec. 12, par. 3.

Evidence can be added indefinitely to the above, demonstrating that the union. of Christianity with the Roman Empire and the enforcement of Sunday ended in disaster to the morals of the people and the welfare of the state.

Result of Sunday Enforcement in England and Scotland

Puritanism in Great Britain toward the close of the sixteenth century locked

horns with Episcopalianism. The

controversy brought the question of

Sunday to the

front, and in [594 Dr. Bownde, a Puritan, "pub

lished his treatise on the Sabbath, wherein he maintains the morality of the seventh part of time for the worship of God." This book had a wonderful circulation among the people. "All the Puritans fell in with this doctrine, and distinguished themselves by spending that part of sacred time [Sunday] in public, family, and private acts of devotion." "This doctrine, carrying such a fair show of piety, at least in. the opinion of the common people, and such as did not examine the true grounds of it, induced many to embrace and defend it; and in a very little time it became the most bewitching error and the most popular infatuation that ever was embraced by the people of England."

land and Scotland it failed to make peo ple moral. Macaulay said:

"Those passions and tastes which had been sternly repressed broke forth with ungovernable violence as soon as the check was withdrawn Men flew to frivolous amusements and tc criminal pleasures, with the greediness which long and enforced abstinence naturally pro duces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion; for the nation, nauseated by cant. suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity, and still smarting from the recent tyranny of rul ers [Puritans] austere in life and powerfu in prayer, looked for a time with compla cency on the softer and gayer vices."-" His tory of England," Vol. I, p. 179, fifth edition The ascetic penances [of the Puritans] were afterwards succeeded in the nation by an era of hypocritical sanctity, and we may trace this last stage of insanity and immorality closing with impiety. The very corruption it has left behind still breeds in monstrous shapes."D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Litera ture," Vol. VI, p. 275.

These times were marked by the growth of sins of all sorts particularly pride, uncleanness. contempt of ordinances, oppres

The Puritan idea prevailed, the crusade for enforced Sunday observance began, and after half a century of trial in Eng

nant in Scotland was subscribed in 1580. renewed in 1639, at the very period of Sabbath excitement. Cromwell, when he invaded Scotland, says in a letter to the Lord President of the Council of State dated Sept. 25, 1650:

"I thought I should have found in Scotland a conscientious people and a barren country; about Edinburgh it is as fertile for corn as any part of England; but the people generally