**A REVIEW OF SUNDAY LEGISLATION IN CENTURY NINETEEN. NO. 2.**
BY PROF. P. T. MAGAN.
PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION.
FOR many years after the attempt to prohibit the handling of the United States mails on the first day of the week in 1829-30, the matter, as far as the national Congress was concerned, was allowed to sleep. That is, as far as we know, there was no ostensible pressure brought to bear upon members of the House of Representatives by the religious fraternities in their constituencies.
But in the year 1888 it was destined to spring to life again in two separate measures, the one of which, although it was introduced into the U. S. Senate four days later than the other, was in truth, as will afterwards appear, pretended to be its precursor.
On the 25th day of May, Senator Henry W. Blair introduced a resolution into the U. S. Senate, of which the following is an exact copy:—
50th CONGRESS, 1st SESSION. S. R. 86.
Joint Resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting establishments of religion and free public schools.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of the House concurring therein), That the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States, be, and hereby is, proposed to the States, to become valid when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States, as provided in the Constitution:—
ARTICLE.
SECTION 1. No State shall make or maintain any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
SEC. 2. Each State in this Union shall establish and maintain a system of free public schools adequate for the education of all the children living therein, between the ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, in the common branches of knowledge, and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian religion. But no money raised by taxation imposed by law, or any money or other property or credit belonging to any municipal organization, or to any State, or to the United States, shall ever be appropriated, applied, or given to the use or purposes of any school, institution, corporation, or person, whereby instruction or training shall be given in the doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances peculiar to any sect, denomination, organization, or society, being or claiming to be religious in their character; nor shall such peculiar doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances be taught or inculcated in the free public schools.
SEC. 3. To the end that each State, the United States, and all the people thereof, may have and preserve governments republican in form and in substance, the United States shall guaranty to every State, and to the people of every State and of the United States, the support and the maintenance of such a system of free public schools as is herein provided.
SEC. 4. That Congress shall enforce this article by legislation when necessary.
Now for Congress to enforce this amendment would be logically for Congress to enforce a national religion, of which the observance of Sunday as a sacred day would be an integral part. In order to show that this is so it will be necessary to enter into a somewhat extended line of argument.
Prima facie sections one and two of the above proposed amendment appear to be direct contradictions the one of the other. The first emphatically declares that "no State shall ever make or maintain any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" while the opening words of section two expressly stipulate that:—
Each State in the Union shall establish and maintain a system of free public schools, adequate for the education of all the children living therein, between the ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, in the common branches of knowledge, and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian religion.
The logic of such an amendment is briefly this, that no State shall ever make or maintain a law respecting the establishment of religion; but every State in this Union shall make and maintain laws establishing the principles of the Christian religion.
It will be very manifest that a minute study and discussion of this proposed amendment would lead into the many ramifications of the questions of "centralization," "State rights," etc., which are without the province of this paper; but this one point is apparent, that such an amendment would empower Congress to legislate upon the subject of the Christian religion, and to enforce by legislation the teaching of that religion in all the public schools of the nation.
Mr. Blair evidently conceives the business of the Legislature to be, not merely to see that the persons and property of the people are secure from attack, but that it ought to be a jack-of-all-trades, architect, engineer, theologian, a Lady Bountiful in every township, "a Paul Pry in every home, spying, eavesdropping, relieving, admonishing, spending our money for us, and choosing our opinions for us." His amendment virtually provides that the national government shall prescribe the religion of the people.
Read again section 3, and let us consider it a moment. It would appear from the wording that Senator H. W. Blair and the framers of his amendment entertain an idea that "governments republican in form and in substance," cannot be had or preserved unless they guarantee to the people a system of free public schools, teaching "virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian religion." Or, to express the same thing in a more concise form, that it is from religion that republican forms of government derive the power they possess to command obedience. We would like to ask in the name of common sense from what religion the United States derives its power to exclude the Chinese from this country, and to enforce the Geary Act. There is nothing more patent in the annals of history than that governments have existed, have received some obedience, and have afforded some protection, in times in which they derived no support from religion. True, the popular forms of government which once existed in Greece and Sparta were governments under which Church and State were united; but the religion in all these cases derived its power from the State, not the State its power from the religion. Did not the government of the Colony, afterwards State, of Rhode Island, exist for over two hundred years, "republican in form and substance," without enforcing things spiritual in any shape, way, or manner? And has not the government of Rhode Island been respected, and have not the life and property of her citizens been as safe as in any other State?
Every people as soon as they have emerged from the state of absolute savagery have found out their need of civil government and instituted it accordingly. The fact of the matter is that civil government is as universal as the practice of cookery. And who in the world do we find talking about Christian cookery and heathen cookery, or of Mohammedan pies and Presbyterian cakes. Stomachs are the same the world over, and what is good for the Methodist is good for the Parsee, and vice versa.
The maxim that governments ought to train people in the way they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that the government is more likely to lead the people in the right way, than the people to fall into the right way themselves? Have there not been governments which were blind leaders of the blind? Have not the governments of the world always been in the wrong on religious subjects? "If, therefore, it be true that every ruler is bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation of his own religion; it will follow that, for one ruler that has been bound to use his conscience for the propagation of truth, a thousand have been bound in conscience to use their power for falsehood." It is true, and no rational being will deny it, that the Christian religion sanctions civil government, and it sanctions every other thing in this world which promotes the happiness and virtue of the human family; but it is impossible for us "to conceive in what sense religion can be said to be the basis of the government, in which religion is not also the basis of the practices of eating, drinking, and lighting fires in cold weather."
On two successive occasions did the Government of England undertake to train the people of England in things religious. The fruit of the work of the experiments presents a fearful warning to the United States as her statesmen steer her so cautiously into the same channel. Says Macaulay:—
When the people whom Charles [I, king of England] had so assiduously trained in the good way, had rewarded his paternal care by cutting off his head, a new kind of training came into fashion. Another government arose, which, like the former, considered religion as its surest basis, and the religious discipline of the people as its first duty. Sanguinary laws were enacted against libertinism; profane pictures were burned; drapery was put on indecorous statues; the theaters were shut up; fast days were numerous; and the Parliament resolved that no person should be admitted into any public employment, unless the House should first be satisfied of his vital godliness. We know what was the end of this training. We know that it ended in impiety, in filthy and heartless sensuality, in the dissolution of all ties of honor and morality. We know that at this very day scriptural phrases, scriptural names, perhaps some scriptural doctrines, excite disgust and ridicule, solely because they are associated with the austerity of that period.21
Thus has the experiment of training the people in established forms of religion been twice tried in England on a large scale, once by Charles and Laud, and once by the Puritans. The High Tories of our time still entertain many of the feelings and opinions of Charles and Laud, though in a mitigated form; nor is it difficult to see that the heirs of the Puritans are still amongst us. It would be desirable that each of these parties should remember how little advantage or honor it formerly derived from the closest alliance with power, that it fell by the support of rulers and rose by their opposition, that of the two systems, that in which the people were at any time drilled was always at that time the unpopular system, that the training of the High Church ended in the reign of the Puritans, and that the training of the Puritans ended in the reign of the harlots.
Every argument in support of such a system as this proves futile.
In fact, the artillery of the advocates of this theory is composed of two sorts of cannon,—guns which will not go off at all, and guns which go off with such a vengeance that they recoil with most crushing effect upon those who train and fire them.
Again, the advocates of this and all similar measures say that their ideas embodied in the Constitution would be a recognition of God in the document as king of this country. Let us see. The National Convention of the W. C. T. U. in 1888, by resolution, indorsed the proposed Blair amendment as deserving their "earnest and united support." Exactly; that was only the logical sequel to their resolution, in National Convention, of 1887:—
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, local, State, national, and world-wide, has one vital, organic thought, one all-absorbing purpose, one underlying enthusiasm, and that is that Christ shall be this world's king; yea, verily, THIS WORLD'S KING in its realm of cause and effect,—king at its courts, its camps, its commerce,—king of its colleges and cloisters,—king of its customs and constitutions. . . . The kingdom of Christ must enter the realm of law through the gateway of politics.
Christ to be KING OF THIS WORLD; but he himself said, "My kingdom is not of this world." And those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon him treat him as their prototypes treated him over 1,800 years ago.
They bow the knee, and spit upon him; they cry "Hail!" and smite him on the cheek; they put a scepter in his hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown him, but is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on him, and inscribe magnificent titles over the cross on which they have fixed him, to perish in ignominy and pain.