p. 306 | A Ridiculous Law

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 27, 1913

A Ridiculous Law

AN effort to enforce the drastic Sunday laws of Connecticut upon players of Sunday golf called forth an editorial in the Hartford Times of February 10, from which we take the following paragraph:—

“It will be noticed that those who sign their names to the protest against Sunday golf in West Hartford base their objections upon grounds as strong as they are reasonable. They point to the existing law—narrow, ridiculous, and impossible of strict enforcement as it is—and ask if representative citizens consider it advisable that the organization with which they are connected should go on record as encouraging the violation of that law. They make other points, too, and there is, of course, every probability that their true objection is inspired by a personal distaste for Sunday golf in just the place where it is proposed to play Sunday golf, rather than upon any respect for an archaic Connecticut statute; but their argument holds good just the same. The law is there, and one can not get away from it; at least one can not get away from the fact that it is there. Everybody knows that for practical purposes it is honored only in the breach.”

A law which is “narrow, ridiculous, and impossible of strict enforcement,” and which is “honored, only in the breach,” might well be repealed.