Petitions Galore | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 4, 1897

Petitions Galore.

The religious people in various States seem to have a great burden for the District of Columbia. There seems to be a prevailing sentiment that the people of that particular region, ten miles square, do not know how to take care of themselves. They are assumed to be especially imbecile in the matter of Sunday observance; they either do not know what they want, or what is good for them, or else they do not know how to ask for what they want. All through the Congressional proceedings are injected such items as this: “Mr. Sewell presented petitions of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, of the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, of the Emanuel Baptist Church, and of the Christian Citizenship Union, all of Camden, N. J., praying for the passage of Senate Bill No. 2485, to further protect the first day of the week as a day of rest in the District of Columbia.” Such petitions are sent to Congress from nearly all the States. But while the people of the States are particularly solicitous for the religious condition of the people (as to outward observance), there are other points in which the citizens of the District of Columbia are deemed incapable of self-government; for instance, “Mr. McMillan presented a petition of the Michigan State Board of Health, praying for the passage of Senate Bill No. 1552, for the further prevention of cruelty to animals in the District of Columbia.” Again, petitions come from the presidents of colleges and universities, the bishops of dioceses, and various other sources, asking for a law to restrict vivisection in the District of Columbia. And many other measures are continually being made the subjects of anxious petition on the part of residents of remote localities for the benefit of the people of that District. If the various churches and temperance and humane societies of the District were to send out floods of petitions to the various State Legislatures asking for legislation on this, that, and the other subject, it is just possible that they would receive some strong hints to attend to their own business.