Stocks as Punishment by L. Brooking

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 9, 1909

Stocks as Punishment

By L. Brooking

EARLY in August a confectioner of Cleethorpes, England, having been summoned for Sunday opening, demanded that the Grimsby justices should order him to be put in the stocks in the marketplace in default of paying a fine and costs for Sunday trading, and he is still resolute about the matter. He says:—

“With regard to my present attitude, I ascertained that I was summoned under an act of King Charles II (Lord’s Day Observance Act), which states that failure to remit the fine is to be met by confinement in the stocks in the public market-place for two hours.

“I do not choose to pay the fine, and I have the right to demand the alternative. Of course, it is contended that the stocks are now obsolete, but that is not my fault. If the form of punishment under the act is obsolete, then the act is also obsolete.”

Those who would enforce legislation on such matters (in the British empire at least) would do well to heed the message of King Edward VII, which he recently sent to the Plenary Council of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec, Canada: “It is my constant desire that religious and civil liberty should always be enjoyed by my subjects in all parts of the empire.”

The obligatory cessation of work on Sunday does not give religious liberty, but makes a distinction of one class above another.—L. Brooking.