The law knows the humblest citizen. The transgression of law by no exception. them is as really a crime as in the case of any other Gross misrepresentations of Baptist views. Position of Baptists. Sundaykeepers should be protected. A logical inference. citizen. Our government knows nothing of those kingly rights which set emperors, monarchs, and their servants above law. If, therefore, there is no transgression of constitutional law in carrying the United States mail on the first day, then there is none in a private citizen following his otherwise lawful and peaceable occupation on the same day. In some quarters, during the last year, our motives and designs were grossly misrepresented by prejudiced persons, in our legislatures and elsewhere. We were represented as "wishing the legislature to change the Sabbath from the first to the seventh day of the week;" and were accused of "covertly wishing to compel our fellowcitizens to keep our Sabbath day." No insinuation could be more grossly deceptive no accusation more flagitiously unjust to us as a people. We declare unequivocally, that we do not desire any such thing. We believe that keeping the Sabbath day is purely a religious duty. All we ask is, that our State Legislatures leave the matter where the Constitution of the United States and the laws. of the general government have placed it. They have no more right to determine this religious duty, than they have to determine the rites of Christian worship. We believe our fellowcitizens ought to be protected in the peaceable observation of their day of religious rest, as in the observance of every other religious institution, except where such observance is made a sanctuary for crime. We ask the same protection for ourselves on the seventh day of the week, and nothing more. If the Constitution may be infringed upon to put down the observers of the seventh day, no one can say how long it will be before other minor denominations may be put down too. Already attempts are Tendencies toward church Lessons from history. Danger from wrong making to exact a confession of faith, unknown to the Constitution, as a qualification for a legal oath. and state. If the religious sanctification of the first day of the week may be enforced by statutory requirements, so may the forms and hours of worship. He who says. that there is no danger of the latter being enforced while statutory regulations violate two of the most sacred provisions of the national Constitution, knows but little of the history of mankind, or pays but little attention to the tendencies of human nature. A single standing violation of the Constitution is an example precedents. and an authority for others to follow. One religious observance established by law, is the admission of the main principle of national hierarchy, and will come in time to be referred to as authority for similar infractions of the Constitution. The laws for the observance of the first day are, in fact, a union of church and state. It is not pretended that they are designed to subserve directly a political or civil ob- religious. ject. It is altogether a religious object which they subserve. It becomes every friend of equal rights as he loves the Constitution of his country, to oppose these infractions of its just principles, until equal liberty is secured to all citizens by statutory provisions, as by the fundamental laws of the nation. Our opponents often remind us of their pretense, that we are under no more restrictions than other citizens; we may do as we please about keeping the seventh day. To this we reply, that the tyrants of the Roman people deprived the republic of its liberties by professing themselves the guardians of their interests. "By declaring themselves the protectors of the people, Marius and Cæsar had subverted the constitution of their country." Augustus established a despotism by artfully affecting to be governed himself by the same laws which he procured to be enacted Sunday laws purely An absurd pretense. Roman tyranny. Specious sophistry. Conse quences as maxim. to take away the rights of the people. These are the same principles upon which religious coercionists conjure us to be quiet under the loss of our constitutional rights. The progress of these things toward despotism is as dangerous in the American republic as in that of Rome, and may be as rapid. Their success would be as deadly to human happiness and all the best interests of mankind, in the nineteenth century, as they were in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Human nature now affords no better guaranty for the safety of our national rights than it did to the Romans at the summit of their greatness. Liberty can be preserved only at the expense of perpetual vigilance, and by the popular support of individual rights. If ever the doctrine which has A deceptive been urged before one of our legislative bodies, "the greatest good of the greatest number," should become a popular political maxim to justify the course. of the many in taking away the rights of the few, the halls of legislation will become scaffolds for the execution of liberty, and that odious principle will be the shroud in which it will be buried. Despots may establish a round of religious observances, and exact an unwilling and insincere conformity to their arbitrary prescriptions; but they can never convince the understanding nor win the heart of one who knows. the voice of truth. They can only make him a slave, while the effects of their arbitrary prescriptions on the popular mind will be to wither up all interest in the religious tendencies of an observance sustained only by the enactments of heartless politicians. All that makes religion vital and effective. for its own holy objects, expires when the sword is drawn to enforce it. Liberty, humanity, religion, and our national Constitution, then, require that the laws enforcing the observance of the first day of the week should be repealed. Religious legislation destroys true religion. Appeal of American No class legislation As American citizens, as independent freemen, and as responsible stewards of the glorious heritage citizens. bequeathed to us by the fathers of the Revolution, we shall, with the aid of the Majesty of heaven, maintain unimpaired the high privileges secured to us by the charter of our liberties. We ask for no exclusive immunities. We disclaim all right of human gov- wanted. ernment to exercise over, or fetter in the least, the religious rights of any being. Might is not right, neither does the accident of being a majority give any claim to trample on the rights of the minority. It is a usurpation of authority to oppress the minority, or set at naught their indefeasible rights. In civil affairs we respect the authorities that be, but in religious service, resent being forced to keep the commandments of men. We recognize the laws of the land in all secular matters, and the laws of God, and of God alone, in religious faith and practice. These are the inalienable rights of all the members of a republic. These are rights reserved by the people to themselves, in the formation of our government, which no power can legitimately wrest from us, and, with the help of God, none shall. 1 This commendable position has almost invariably been taken by the smaller sects of the country when they have felt the unjust power of government. Although they have demanded that legislatures shall restrict themselves to their legitimate sphere, yet they have over and over again refused to accept special exemptions or immunities from the workings of any law. They have uniformly taken the position that law should have universal application: if right, it should be enforced everywhere without exception; if wrong, it should be repealed. This idea of law was the very one that inspired the colonists to refuse to pay the tax on tea even when its cost was reduced to less than what it had been without the tax. The feeling that one is wronged is a much stronger feeling and a longer-felt feeling than can be any discomfort or pain caused by deprivation of property or imprisonment. An American cares far more for his rights, for his liberty, for the heritage that it has taken centuries to secure, than he does for the discomforts of a prison because of disobedience to an unjust statute. It is therefore not so much to keep himself out of prison as it is to keep unspotted the integrity of human rights that the Sabbatarian demands the repeal of Sunday laws. God's authority alone recogligious affairs nized in re Worship an inalienable right. Garrison's opposition to Sunday statutes positive tyranny. THE AMERICAN ANTI-SUNDAY-LAW CON VENTION OF 1848. AN APPEAL TO THE FRIENDS OF CIVIL AND RELIG- DRAFTED BY WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. To the Friends of Civil and Religious Liberty: The right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience is inherent, inalienable, self-evident. Yet it is notorious that, in 1 "Liberator," 18, 11; "Life of Garrison," by his children (Century Sunday-laws. Company, New York), volume iii, page 222 et seq. Garrison was as much opposed to Sunday laws as he was to slavery. Both, to him, were equally violative of human rights and human freedom. "Certain we are," said he emphatically in one of his ringing editorials in the "Liberator," "that all attempts to coerce an observance of the Sabbath by legislation have been, must be, and ought to be, nugatory." "Liberator," 6, 118; "Life of Garrison," volume ii, page 108. He was an earnest believer in the observance of the fourth commandment, but he was, as he said, "decidedly of the opinion that every attempt whic.. is made to enforce its observance, as a peculiarly 'holy day' by pains and penalties, whether civil or ecclesiastical, IS POSITIVE TYRANNY, which ought to be resisted by all the Lord's freemen, all who are rejoicing in the glorious liberty of the sons of God." "Life of Garrison," volume ii, pages 111, 112. Wendell Phillips, that American orator whose powers of speech will be known throughout all time, fully endorsed Garrison's views on Sunday laws. In a letter of February 11, 1848, he says: “His [Garrison's] new Sabbath call," referring to this Appeal to the friends of civil and religious liberty" is finely drawn "p, I think. I did not sign it, though agreeing with its principles." The call was signed by William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, Parker Pillsbury, James and Lucretia Mott, C. C. Burleigh, and many others. The anti-slavery workers proved to be a very formidable opposition to the Sundayist of sixty years ago, and had not the mid-century agitation of the freedom of the slave absorbed all other questions at that time, there is little doubt but that the great statesmen, orators, and public men of the day would have accomplished the total overthrow of the Sundayist persecutions which certain zealous religionists had instituted. They even attempted to put a stop to the preaching of the day by throwing abolitionists in jail, an Wendell Phillips opposed to Sunday laws. |