SUNDAY LAW IN CONNECTICUT.
It is thus that the New York World of July 20 speaks of the new Sunday law in Connecticut:— “Connecticut’s new blue law, designed to regulate the Sunday habits of the people according to the whim of Sabbatarianism, was not enforced all over the State on last Sunday, the first day set for its operation. It was enforced only in spots and in a manner to gratify private bigotry and local jealousies. It was not designed to be enforced. It was, however, held as a menace over the community, as an instrument of oppression and a possibility of blackmail. It was a nuisance and an interference with the natural liberty of the people. In the light of the first day’s evidence, it will not do for the authors of the law to protest that they meant to insist on its universal enforcement. That they well knew was impossible. The law is already discredited. The pretense of enforcing it might as well be abandoned until the law can be repealed.” And that is just what every Sunday law or religio-civil law will prove, “a menace over the community,” “an instrument of oppression,” an engine of tyranny, a loophole of bigotry. Such laws never have and never can be made universal, for they are in the interest of classes. Only those laws will be universally and justly enforced which guard the equal rights of all. No other laws have a right to exist.