Untitled article by W. H. M.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 9, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 40

A Specious Plea.

By W. H. M.

A PROMINENT Chicago clergyman is credited with this statement:—

Any man with his eyes shut can testify to the violation of the Sunday-closing law. Are these violators of the law to be untouched by penalty? What is the refusal to obey law but anarchy?

This is the value—to the National Reform Association, and the American Sabbath Union—of the movement for the closing of the saloons on Sunday only. It is really of much more weight in the furtherance of their purpose that saloons should remain open the remaining six days of the week if they are but closed on the first. An honest and impartial effort to close the saloons entirely, and do away with the liquor traffic completely, would deprive the Sunday-law party of one of their strongest arguments and most efficient influences for the adoption and enforcement of strict Sunday laws. It gives them an opportunity, which they otherwise would not have, to enlist the numberless “Law and Order Leagues” which are being established throughout the country, and bring to bear their tremendous and cold-blooded force for the enforcement of existing law, irrespective of what principle of civil or religious liberty that law may contravene.

Who can doubt but that so far as its effect upon the liquor business is concerned, Sunday closing is but a specious pretence. It is certain that the strictest closing upon any one day in the week could have no perceptible influence upon the traffic as a whole, or sober any drinking man to a perception of his condition, and save him from his doom. The truth is, the effort to obtain laws for the Sunday closing of the saloon, the store, the shop, the factory, and the office, all stand on precisely the same footing; that is, the enforcement of the religious observance of Sunday.

The closing of the saloon is used as a specious plea because that is acknowledged to be a reform of vital necessity, and is the one most prominent before the public at the present time.

A law to close saloons on Sundays legitimizes the business for the rest of the week; it is another form of license. All forms of business being established, with the saloon, on the same legal basis, he who opens his store or office on Sunday is equally under the ban of the law and public opinion, with the saloon, and, in the public mind will fall, similarly, under the ministerial question and denunciation,— “Are these violators of the law to be untouched by penalty? What is the refusal to obey law but anarchy?”

W. H. M.