The Denver “News” on the Blair Bill.
In discussing the question of Sunday legislation, the Denver News of June 30 says:— “The Blair Sunday bill, which is expected to come before the next Congress and for which petitions are being circulated, can of course only affect such matters as are embraced within Federal jurisdiction. That bill is inspired by a sentiment of religious intolerance, although its friends may be unconscious of the fact. Mr. Crafts disclaims the measure in its present form, but Senator Blair would make the religious phase stronger if he could. The Rev. W. D. Gray, secretary of the Sunday Observance Convention, lately held in Missouri, does not disguise the real character of the movement as he understands it. In a speech made before that body he says:— “‘To appeal to divine authority in our legislation would be to fundamentally change the law of our land, or the principle adopted by our fathers when they said that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. I for one do not believe that as a political maxim. I do not believe that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and so the object of this movement is an effort to change that feature of our fundamental law. Jefferson was under the influence of French ideas when the Constitution was framed, and that had something to do with leaving God out of the Constitution. And I think that the provincial history of this country will compel us to come back to that, and recognize God in our Constitution. And I see in this reform a Providence teaching us the necessity of recognizing something else besides the will of the people as the basis of Government.’” “Such views as the foregoing should kill any attempt to legalize Sunday as a day of rest. The fundamental principle of the Government suits very well, and no interest has enjoyed greater prosperity under its operation than religion. The churches of the United States have a vitality that is not equaled in any other country, and they owe it to the spirit of freedom and to the good sense that cut them entirely loose from the State. The severance cannot be too complete. Religion associated with civil affairs has been too frightful a curse to mankind and too often decimated the race to offer any inducements for such experiments in a land of freedom. A day of rest from toil is a boon that should be preserved, but it will not find legal aid through a measure that implies an encroachment upon liberty of conscience or any alliance between religion and the State that has been happily dispensed with for a hundred years of unexampled national prosperity.” The sentiment expressed in the last sentence of this quotation will be better understood in the light of the following words which occur previously in the same article:— “The object of such a law should be to limit the sum of Sunday labor, by stopping ordinary business, and it should be more especially directed against corporations and companies that employ persons to do work. “Even then the rights of those who from religious motives keep another day should be protected to the utmost, as also the rights of people who attach no religious significance whatever to any day.” “The law should be chary of any interference with the individual in his choice of a way for enjoying his Sunday rest. No restriction upon the individual that rests solely upon the religious conviction of another should form a legitimate feature in such a law. In a general sense the rule for measuring the degree of individual liberty should be that point beyond which the rights of others would be affected.” This would indeed be a very mild Sunday law; much too mild to satisfy the so-called American Sabbath Union.