SUNDAY CLOSING AND PROHIBITIONISTS.
By M. C. W.
A CORRESPONDENT, writing to the California Voice from San Bernardino, gives his reasons why he could not sign a petition to close saloons on Sunday. He says:— "I have had no hand in permitting the business by license. I do not wish to put my name to a petition with those who have, and thus make the world believe that I am in favor of, and perfectly willing for it to run every day except Sundays, and that I thought a crime which was sending its thousands to hell would be greater committed upon Sunday than upon any other day." Whereupon the editor remarks:— "A good many people decline to sign petitions to close dram-shops on Sunday, a plan which perfectly satisfies many others to let the accursed hell-traps run six days forever. It is well to close them Sunday as a preparation for closing them every day. But those who help to license them at all, deserve to have them pour out their cornucopia of curses upon them every day. It is not to be supposed that the Lord ever gave a community or an individual a cent of credit for closing their grog-shops on Sunday if they opened them weekdays. It is a question whether it is any worse at all to steal, kill, or sell rum on Sunday than on other days. The intentional crime cannot be easily aggravated." This is rather talking on both sides of the question. We believe that we see something of the "strait betwixt two" which some of our prohibitionist friends are in. Many of them do not believe in Sunday laws, do not believe in it as a piece of religious legislation, and they know it to be a failure as a temperance measure. They are halting between the duty of doing just what they believe to be right, and the fear of offending the Sunday people. We pity them; but we wish they would stand for the right. If they are too weak to do that, we wish they would take the other side, unless they are gaining strength in supineness. We have not much faith in such a remedy, however. One can see where the Voice stands, but why does it not say so squarely? It ought to know that Sunday closing is no "preparation for closing them every day." It favors Sunday, but it does not help the prohibition cause, and it never has. And "it is [not] a question whether it is any worse at all to steal, kill, or sell rum on Sunday than on other days." A Sunday murder is no worse than a Monday murder, or a Tuesday murder. That is not a crime which is not condemned by law. If the statute law licenses men to sell liquor, they are not committing crime in selling liquor according to the law. The traffic may be sinful, wrong, fraught with great evils to individuals, society, and the State; it may be the breeder of crime, and therefore ought to be made criminal; but as long as it is licensed by law it is not criminal; it is under protection by the law. And it does not help it any to say, "We will license it only six days." That law is just as evil which would license theft six days as seven days. And such a law would not degrade theft, but exalt it to a legitimate business. Forbidding it one day would simply bring honor to that particular day upon which theft is forbidden. Sunday-closing acts and Sunday-closing petitions are ever in favor of Sunday, a religious institution held by a certain class. Let Sunday stand on its merits, like every other institution of the church. And let prohibitionists who believe this stand to it. Seeming defeat in the right is ever true victory, while seeming victory in the wrong is ever humiliating defeat.