Untitled article | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · December 1, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 47

An Old Sunday Law Enforced.

THE Washington Post of November 22 has this item of news:—

John Curtis, a respectable-looking colored boy, was arrested on Sunday for carrying a shotgun along the street. District Attorney Mullowney refused to make out a charge against him for carrying concealed weapons, but the policeman who made the arrest was not to be balked, and carrying his prisoner into Judge Kimball’s court, had him fined $3 under the old levy court law for carrying a gun “with the apparent intention of hunting on the Sabbath.”

There is also an old Sunday law in the District of Columbia which provides—

That no person whatsoever shall work or do any bodily labor on the Lord’s day, commonly called Sunday, and that no person having children, servants, or slaves, shall command, or wittingly or willingly suffer any of them to do any manner of work or labor on the Lord’s day (works of necessity and charity always excepted), nor shall suffer or permit any children, servants or slaves, to profane the Lord’s day by gaming, fishing, fowling, hunting, or unlawful pastimes or recreations; and that every person transgressing this act, and being thereof convict by the oath of one sufficient witness, or confession of the party before a single magistrate, shall forfeit two hundred pounds of tobacco, to be levied and applied as aforesaid.

Another old statute inherited by the District from Maryland, has this provision:—

That if any persons shall hereafter, within this province, wittingly, maliciously, and advisedly, by writing or speaking, blaspheme or curse God, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the three persons, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall utter any profane words concerning the Holy Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, and shall be thereof convict by verdict, or confession, shall for the first offense, be bored through the tongue and fined twenty pounds sterling to the lord proprietor to be applied to the use of the county where the offense shall be committed, to be levied on the offender’s body, goods and chattels, lands or tenements, and in case the said fine can not be levied, the offender to suffer six months’ imprisonment without bail or mainprise; and that for the second offense, the offender being thereof convict as aforesaid, shall be stigmatized by burning in the forehead with the letter B and fined forty pounds sterling to the lord proprietor, to be applied and levied as aforesaid, and in case the same can not be levied, the offender shall suffer twelve months’ imprisonment without bail or mainprise; and that for the third offense, the offender being convict as aforesaid, shall suffer death without the benefit of the clergy.

It behooves “respectable looking colored boys” in the District of Columbia to be a little careful in these days of reviving Puritanism and of official zeal for religious institutions.