Sunday Laws and Anarchy.
By S.
The advocates of compulsory Sunday observance endeavor to foster the idea that opposition to Sunday laws or disregard of the same is anarchy. Thus one of them, writing in “Lord’s Day Papers,” a Milwaukee publication, says: “If one takes a Sunday paper, the newsboy who brings it is his servant, paid by him for breaking the Sabbath, and being an embryo anarchist.” The individual who hired the newsboy to be an “embryo anarchist” would be, of course, from this standpoint, an anarchist full fledged. Anarchy, however, is something quite different from mere opposition to a certain law. Anarchy is opposition to civil authority—to government—and hence opposition to that which civil government is instituted to preserve. Civil government is instituted to preserve human rights, hence anarchy is against such rights, and the true anarchist will both theoretically and in practice, always disregard them. Whatever, therefore, works against the preservation of rights is contrary to civil government and may be properly considered anarchical in its nature. This being so, it follows that Sunday laws and all religious legislation are really manifestations of the spirit of anarchy, for all compulsion in religion is against the sacred right of freedom of conscience. The real anarchy as regards Sunday laws consists not in opposing or disregarding them, but in advocating and enforcing them. Wrong is often embodied in civil statute, but is never transformed into right by the process. It is injustice still, and as such is entitled only to the unceasing opposition of every lover of right. Opposition to a law is not always opposition to good government. It is more essential to consider the object of government than the means by which the civil power seeks to enforce its will. The question, What is justice? is a more important one than What is the law? The advocates of Sunday statutes appeal to “the law,” but they do not go back of the law to that purpose of government which is the only justification for civil legislation. They want Sunday laws not to preserve the rights of the people, but to preserve a religious institution, which they think must be maintained by law, if maintained at all. But a religious institution which cannot be maintained without human law, is a religious counterfeit, and only deserves to disappear into eternal oblivion.