Washington the Great Lobby Camp of the World
By W. A. Colcord
Address by Justice Brewer AUGUST 9 Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court of the United States delivered an address before the Virginia Bar Association, in which he arraigned the “colonial policy” of the government as contrary to the spirit and intent of the men who drafted the national Constitution, deplored the “tendency toward centralization” in the nation, and declared that “Washington is the great lobby camp of the world.” Referring to the tendency on the part of the people to look to Congress for the redress of all grievances and the righting of all wrongs, he said: “Was there ever such a mad scramble on the part of every one believing in the existence of some legal wrong for congressional legislation to redress? Trade-marks, divorces, polygamy, insurance, supervision of corporations, inspection of factories, all are crowded upon Congress, and an appeal made to it for action.” He might have included in his enumeration of the things “crowded upon Congress,” and over which appeal is made to it “for action,” the question of Sunday observance, seven bills for which were introduced into the last session of Congress. It was in this connection that Mr. Brewer made the statement that “Washington is the great lobby camp of the world.” And here again it should not be forgotten that lobbying for national religious legislation is a very prominent part of the work now going on in this great “lobby camp of the world.” In his “History of the International Reform Bureau,” Mr. W. F. Crafts, the manager and superintendent of the Bureau, says: “The Reform Bureau is the first ‘Christian lobby’ established at our national capital to speak to government in behalf of all denominations,” and tells how the Bureau uses “up-to-date methods in bringing pressure to bear on congressmen in favor of moral measures.” Incidentally it may be remarked that in justification and support of the church-and-state measures which this Bureau is seeking to get through Congress, great use is made of the obiter dictum to the Supreme Court decision, of Feb. 22, 1892, handed down by Justice Brewer, declaring that “this is a Christian nation.” It reasons that if this is a Christian nation, it is quite proper for the nation to make laws enforcing the observance of Christian institutions. Alluding to the growing belief that changed conditions in national life justify interpreting the Constitution so broadly as to virtually ignore its letter, Mr. Brewer said: “I fully believe that this nation has all the power which any nation possesses; but that only such as they have enumerated in the Constitution have they granted to the government.” This is but another way of saying what the Constitution itself expressly states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited30by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” And one of the powers which the Constitution in most explicit terms has withheld from Congress is the power to make religious laws. It says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The observations of Justice Brewer apply with peculiar force to the widespread movement and the ever-increasing efforts of church leaders generally to overturn the fundamental principles upon which national government was founded, unite church and state, and set up a religious despotism here, as church and state were united ages past in the Old World, and religious despotisms were set up there. Would that Justice Brewer and all others might see the application of his statements to this phase of the question, and use their God-given powers in protesting against the movement tending to these unholy and undesirable ends.