Denied the Right of Religious Conviction
Plea of J. G. Dasilva Before the Police Court of Honolulu
YOUR Honor, the Judge of the Court. First of all I must say that I am a citizen of a kingdom whose constitution is before us—the Ten Commandments. I have also applied for citizenship in the great and glorious republic of the United States, under whose judiciary power I am to defend myself to-day. I have been conducting a small business in a store on Luso Street for about four years. In this business, with hard labor, and with the coöperation and help of my dear old mother, my wife and children, have earned a fair living and enjoyed freedom and happiness. Two weeks before my arrest, an officer came to my store to inform me of this law regulating Sunday keeping, but I was out. A week later Officer Wright came and ordered my store to be closed, which order I obeyed for good reasons. I called on Sheriff Jarrett and laid my case before him, and tried to make him see the injustice, the hardship, and the unconstitutionality of this law, especially in my case. But the answer was the same that was given at the trial of Christ, "We have a law," etc. Our county attorney gave me the same answer, so also did Deputy Sheriff Rose. Last Sunday, as my custom and duty has been for the last four years, I opened my store and served my good and patient customers, who had been without provisions all day Sabbath (Saturday), because of my keeping that day holy, according to the dictates of my conscience and the law of my God, and in harmony with the Constitution of the United States. I trust that your honor and the court will see that my arrest was not a lawful, just, and impartial one. In that locality, within a few hundred feet, there were seven more stores all like mine open at that time, 8:30 A.M. I was the only one who was arrested, altho one of these stores had its delivery wagon, loaded with groceries, on the road to its customers, and was stopped by the policeman, but not arrested. I asked the officer not to call for the patrol-wagon, telling him that I would walk down to the police station; but he would not consent to do so. His conduct toward both me and my family, I may have a chance to talk about later. He went out, and I quickly took my coat and hat, to ask him again the same privilege, but did not meet him. Not seeing him, I went direct to the police station, and gave myself up as an arrested man. My name was taken. Then Sheriff Jarrett came in and sent me home, requesting my presence in court the next day at 9 o'clock. I claim, and hope to prove it to your honor's satisfaction, and the court's, that this law regulating Sabbath or Sunday keeping was made in excess of the powers of the Federal Government, and should therefore be void and of none effect. Even an act of Congress itself would be void, if it should be in excess of the powers delegated to it by the Constitution of the United States. The fourth amendment to the Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." The fourteenth amendment also reads: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States, . . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." I appeal to your honor's wisdom and understanding of legal enactments, and ask in all candor, Does not this Sunday law directly contradict and violate these two articles of the Constitution of the United States? It seriously abridges the privileges of every laboring man, especially of every seventh-day Sabbath-keeper, as it takes from him one sixth of his time for labor, thus severely crippling him. It establishes a religious ordinance, and compels men to perform it, and in my case it deprives me of the equal protection of the laws. I am exceedingly glad that I am not alone in this interpretation. That great and most noble man, the father of our country (George Washington), and the president of that wise committee which framed the most accurate and wonderful constitution of the nations of the earth, declared that Sunday imposed on those who did not believe in it, was nothing more or less than religious persecution. It is strange; nevertheless a fact, that in the time of his presidency, this persecution took place. The friends of the arrested ones wrote to this noble man asking him if the Constitution perfected by that committee of which he was president warranted such interference with their religious freedom and rights of conscience. This letter is dated August 4, 1789, and can be found in "An Appeal to the Friends of Equal Rights and Religious Freedom in the United States by the Seventh-Day Baptist General Conference, Published in 1846." The President replied: If I had had the least idea of any difficulty resulting from the Constitution adopted by the convention of which I had the honor to be president when it was formed, so as to endanger the rights of any religious denomination, then I never should have attached my name to that instrument. If I had any idea that the general Government was so administered that the liberty of conscience was endangered, I pray you be assured that no man would be more willing than myself to revise and alter that part of it, so as to avoid all religious persecution. You can, without any doubt, remember that I have often expressed as my opinion, that every man who conducts himself as a good citizen is accountable alone to God for his religious faith, and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his conscience. Another good authority to show that the United States should not esteem one day above another and enforce it upon the people, is the verdict of the United States Senate Sunday Mail Report of 1820: It is not in the legitimate province of the legislature to determine what religion is true or what false. Our Government is a civil and not a religious institution. Our Constitution recognizes in every person the right to choose his own religion, and to enjoy it freely without molestation. . . . The proper object of government is to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their civil as well as their religious rights, and not to determine for any whether they shall esteem one day above another, or esteem all days alike. . . . What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights of which government can not deprive any portion of its citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them. Now to show that this same principle is recognized in Congress to-day, and that the senators consider all Sunday legislation as granting special privileges to members of religious societies, and denying them to those who do not believe, in plain violation of the Constitution, I quote from a speech made in the last Congress by Senator Heyburn on the Johnston Sunday Bill: This legislation grants special privileges to the people who are members of religious societies. More than half the world and more than half the people in this city are not members of any religious society. It grants a special privilege to those who are, which is withheld from those who are not. The law in this land was intended to insure perfect freedom and independence to the citizens in regard to the observance of religious principles. . . . No man has the right to set himself up as the moral standard of all the community or of any part of the community except himself. As to the use of the Sabbath day, every man, so far as personal acts that do not include any acts of lawlessness are concerned, should be the guardian of his own morals. It was never intended that the law should lay down the rules that should constitute a good man, and say that all men should live up to these rules. That never was the intention of the lawmakers, and we discovered it very soon after we became a nation and had organized government, and we abandoned that kind of legislation. It was the legislation that resulted in whipping people at the tail of carts, placing them in the stocks, branding them upon the hand, and so forth. It was such legislation that wrote the annals of bloodshed and oppression and intolerance in the religious history of the world, where a part of the people undertook to be sponsors for the conscience of another part. Upon these same grounds the Supreme Court of California in 1858 decided that Sunday laws were unconstitutional, for in this decision we read, "The act in question is in intention and effect a discrimination in favor of one religious profession over all others, and as such is in violation of the Constitution." The Sunday law violates this provision of the Constitution, because it establishes a compulsory religious observance. It violates as much the religious freedom of the Christian as of the Jew. The principle is the same, whether the act compels us to do what we wish to do or what we wish not to do. There are still some States and Territories which are loyal to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and we hope that Hawaii will soon be added to this number. There are courts which also consider the rights of man inviolable as they are taught by that eminent jurist Blackstone, who said: These rights, then, which God and nature have established, and which are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislature has the power to abridge or destroy them. Your honor, I am trying to live a conscientious Christian life and earn an honest living for my family, and kindly ask you to consider the words of President Fairchild: Government is never the gainer in the execution of a law that is manifestly unjust. . . . Conscientious men are not the enemies, but the friends, of any government but tyranny. They are its strength, and not its weakness. Daniel, in Babylon, praying contrary to law, was a true friend and supporter of the government; while those who, in their pretended zeal for the law and the constitution, would strike down the good man, were its real enemies. It is only when government transcends its sphere, that it comes in conflict with the conscience of men.