Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887: Volume 1, Number 6
Philosophy
Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887: Volume 1, Number 6
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Strictly private gambling is safe on Sunday, and our _Chevaliers
d'Industrie_ may ruin a dozen families, and provoke suicide and
murder,--"plate sin with gold" and it is protected, and the swindling
shyster is protected too on Sunday, for no civil process can be served
on that holy day; the rogue who is bothered on that day can get
exemplary damages by this law of Sunday asylum. But the poor keeper of
a restaurant or of an inn, is the victim for old legislative boys to
throw stones at. They have provided a hundred dollar fine for every
innholder or victualler who keeps, or "suffers to be kept," on his
premises, any implements "used in gaming," or which may be used for
"purposes of amusement," and does not prevent such things from being
used on Sunday. So if he is not extremely vigilant throughout his
house and grounds, he may be caught with a hundred dollar fine, OR be
imprisoned three months in the House of Correction at the pleasure of
the magistrate!! and for every subsequent offense may be _imprisoned
in the House of Correction_ as much as one year, and then required to
give security for obeying the law. Under such a law a malicious young
hoodlum may contrive to send a landlord to jail.
To open a shop, warehouse, or workhouse on Sunday is a fifty dollar
offense, and it is fifty dollars also for doing "any manner of labor,
business or work" on Sunday, unless the judge considers it a matter of
necessity or charity; nevertheless, the "making of butter and cheese"
is good Sunday work, if we do not _open the doors_ which would bring
on a $50 fine. So is the work of steam, gas and electricity,
newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, druggists, milkmen, (bakers before
10 and after 4,) boat houses, livery stables, ferry boats, and street
cars. But to catch a fish or fire a pistol on Sunday is a $10 offense,
and to look on at a game of chess is a $50 crime. However, the law
does not punish whistling on Sunday, unless the whistler has
spectators, then it is a $50 business for all concerned. To read
Longfellow's Excelsior on Sunday to a parlor of company is a $50
crime. Reading Milton's Paradise Lost, or the American Declaration of
Independence would also rank as criminal business, being an
entertainment, and a party of twenty playing a game of croquet may be
fined a thousand dollars.
Verily, if it were not for such hypocritical and asinine legislation
as this, we might forget the history of New England witchcraft, and
the hanging of Quakers in sight of the spot where this law was enacted
as an _improvement_ on a still worse, but practically obsolete
statute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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