til 4: 30 the next morning.

A similar move was made by another Congressman, March 26, 1836. At midnight" Mr. Lawler raised a point of order, that it was not lawful to continue the sessions of the House after twelve o'clock on Saturday night, so as to break in upon the sabbath." (See "Debates in Congress," March 26, 1836.) The House refused to discontinue its session. Since that time both houses of Congress have repeatedly remained in session on Sunday. As stated by Senator Bacon:

"There is nothing in the law which denies to Congress the right to sit on Sunday, and I have myself frequently seen Congress sit on Sunday."- Congressional Record, Dec. 1, 1913.

There should be nothing in the law forbidding any one to labor on Sunday if he wishes to do so in a way consistent with the rights of others. And surely the people who send a Congressman to Washington have as much right to work

on Sunday as has Congress. Furthermore, no legislator is empowered by the people to set up a standard of morals for them. Again: the Constitution, which each swears to uphold, forbids his even attempting such a thing.

Congress Against Sunday Legislation A strong and concerted movement was augurated in 1829 to stop the carrying

petitions to a select committee; from which emanated one of the most masterly state papers which has ever been published in this country. It was addressed to the understanding, not to the passions, of the American people, and there was a response from all quarters to its cogent, persuasive, and conclusive reasoning. Its arguments were unanswered

"If a solemn act of legislation shall, in one point, define the law of God, or point out to the citizen one religious duty, it may, with equal propriety, proceed to define every part of divine revelation, and enforce every religious obligation, even to the forms and ceremonies of worship, the endowment of the church, and the support of the clergy."

About fifty years

later Senator Blair introduced

a bill

covering practically the same ground as that taken by the memorialists referred

to in Mr. Johnson's

able paper. But this

bill died in committee.

Many Religious Measures Rejected

Since 1888 there have been nearly one hundred measures introduced into the national Congress seeking in one way or another to coerce the people into compliance with some religious opinion or dogma. A few of these have passed both branches of Congress at different sessions, but so far none has become law. Nor will any such bill become law, while our legislators remain true to the American principles of religious liberty and to the fundamental law of our Republic. There can be no question as to the purpose of the framers of the First Amendment to withhold from Congress all authority to enact any legislation touching any religious question. The Amendment has been so understood in the past; it is so understood now.

and are unanswerable. and the petitioners were silenced."

Sunday-Law Champions Defeated by Un

answerable Arguments

This masterly and unanswerable state paper referred to was the report on Sunday mails written by the chairman of the committee, Hon. Richard M. Johnson. A paragraph will show the forcefulness of his arguments:

Takoma Park. D C.

T

HIS heading is quoted from the Reform Bulletin, organ of the New York Civic League, printed in Albany. Under it the Bulletin describes, in part:

"A great State-wide movement among the sporting element, especially the baseball fans, to secure the passage of a Sunday-baseball bill by the coming session of the legislature. They declare that they are going to secure the passage of a bill to legalize not simply amateur baseball on Sunday, which in the past is all that they claimed to be working for, but now they are throwing off the mask and declaring that professional baseball must be legalized on Sunday.

"We shall have the most strenuous battle on this question that we have had for several years past. The New York Civic League, which keeps two representatives on the ground here at Albany, working all the time throughout the session of the legislature, will be on hand this year as usual to lead this fight, as it has led many other similar hard fights in the last ten years.

"Mr. Charles H. Ebbetts, who is leading this great State-wide movement for Sunday baseball, is one of the most prominent baseball men in the country, and is a man of great influence with big baseball magnates, who doubtless will put a large amount of money into this fight to secure the passage of such a bill. Sunday baseball would probably double the dividends of all the baseball corporations; hence they can well afford to make large contributions to such a campaign.

"As a result of a complaint made by the New York Civic League to the authorities in Brooklyn against Mr. Ebbetts's holding Sunday baseball games last summer, he was arrested and convicted. He appealed his case to the higher court, and the higher court sustained his conviction in the lower court; hence

Mr. Ebbetts's determination to repeal a law which he has found uncomfortable to violate.

"We have shown in the Reform Bulletin many times in the past and will do the same again in the near future, that the legalizing of baseball on Sunday will mean in the end the legalizing of all other public sports on Sunday.

"We earnestly urge every friend of the Christian Sabbath in our State to help the New York Civic League financially in this extraordinary campaign which is immediately upon us. We ought to have at least a thousand dollars or more at the earliest possible moment to pay the expense of doing a number of very important preparatory things which ought to be done before the legislature meets on the first Wednesday in January. Friends of the Christian Sabbath, it is your fight; help us."

This sufficiently reveals the true nature of the New York Civic [?] League; it is in fact the New York Sunday enforcement league. It is a league to enforce a church institution by civil law. It is a league to give the Sunday churches a monopoly of Sunday, so that on that day nothing shall compete with them in getting and holding the attention and liberalities of the people.

As we view it, it is better spiritually to go to church on Sunday than to go to a ball game, for to tell the truth we are not enthusiastic over bal games at any time. They are far from being a means of grace. But we deny the right of the state to control in any way the activities of the people on Sunday any more than on other days.

Sunday is a religious institution. Its observance is believed by many to be a religious duty; and these are the people who are appealing to the state to enforce its observance upon those who either do not admit its claims to divine authority, or who, admitting its moral claims theoretically, are not willing to give them practical acknowledgment by devoting that day to the services of religion. Our position is that the state has no right to enforce the observance of any moral duty as such. If it may enforce one such duty, then it may enforce another, and

In like manner, civil is defined as pertaining to a city or state, or to a citizen in his relations to his fellow citizens or to the state."

It must be evident to every thinking man not blinded by prejudice, that the only duty the state has in regard to Sunday is to protect from unreasonable disturbance those who want to rest on that day, just as the civil authorities protect people who want to be quiet, from unreasonable disturbance at unreasonable hours upon other days.

If a baseball club should secure a ground and attempt to play a game of ball on Sunday at the hour of worship, in such close proximity to a church as actually to disturb the congregation or to interrupt their devotions, we believe that it would be legitimate for the authorities to say, "You cannot play here at this hour," etc.

But no ball club does anything of that kind. The amateur game is played on a vacant lot in the outskirts of the town or city, where no one is disturbed unless it be mentally by the mere knowledge that a game is in progress on Sunday. The professional clubs play in some inclosed ground to which nobody is admitted except such as pay a fee for the sake of seeing the game. The only possible disturbance is the annoyance felt by A because B does something that he (A) regards as wicked, and for which A may feel himself responsible in measure because he, as a part of the community, permits it to be done.

In short, the only disturbance caused by Sunday baseball is mental disturbance due to bigotry and intolerance. It is due also in part to the mistaken notion that

the state has some measure of responsibility to prohibit and punish whatever is morally wrong or sinful, and to encourage and make as easy as possible that which is morally right or righteous.

It was this idea that was responsible for all the persecution of the Middle Ages. The state was held to be a moral person, responsible not only for its own. acts, but also for the acts of its citizens.

The ruler who believes that he is morally responsible for the religious faith and practice of the people under him, must of necessity be a persecutor. He must endeavor, to the best of his ability and to the utmost of his power, to enforce upon all men what he believes to be true religious views and right practices. And this is what is bound up in every attempt to treat Sunday as other than a civil holiday.

If because of the desire of so many people to be free on Sunday from the ordinary cares of business, the state sees fit to make it a legal holiday, or dies non, that is, a day on which no legal business can be transacted, nobody ought to object. That is just what is done for all our legal holidays; that is, they are made civil holidays. But when the state or city goes farther and forbids work, business, or pleasure on a given day, that makes it not a civil holiday but a church. holy day. It is against this that LIBERTY protests, and against this every libertyloving citizen ought to protest, regardless of his opinions concerning the religious sanctions of the day. Let the state keep its hands off from holy things.

B.

HUMAN enactments which circumscribe conscience, subject the soul to a thraldom more humiliating and more. ruinous than any the body has ever endured. Where conscience is fettered. there is no freedom worthy of the name. It took many generations for men to learn that he who prescribes laws to hamper or to crush the consciences of men, makes a slave of himself and of his posterity, as well as of those against whom such laws are aimed.-C. M. Snow.

T

HE prohibition forces have had occasion for great rejoicing over the results of the fall elections. All the election returns were against the liquor traffic. In every contest in every State the temperance cause succeeded in making excellent scores. The liquor interests are beginning to see "the handwriting on the wall" of modern Babylon's banqueting hall. Dagon and Bacchus are lying on their faces at the foot of their shrines.

The seesawing in Ohio, which lasted several days, now the drys, then the wets, now the drys, then the wets claiming the majority,- did not hide the fact that in the very close vote itself was a decided victory for the prohibition forces. The fact that the prohibition cause overcame more than 40,000 wet majority in the previous contest in the State; and the fact that it overcame the seesawing of the wets in Cincinnati, with honest election returns from the State; and the fact that the wets in Cincinnati could, with the press of a button, dig up 10,000 wet majority in the city to overcome a lead of 8,000 dry majority in the State, and then again by the same means unearth 2,000 more wet votes in the same city, after all the precincts had been tabulated and reported, in order to overcome the final lead of dry votes in the State, are a

significant running com

mentary on Cincinnati politics and the system of wet rule, which in itself spells