Sunday laws and customs differ so widely in our various States, that they cannot all be wise and just. Rest from labour and business is secured in Southern California, without State legislation, by the action of public opinion; and were this to become too weak, it would be reinforced by the trades-unions. Personal liberty is not necessarily violated by laws prohibiting disturbance of public worship; but it would be if anyone were compelled to testify in court, or sit on the jury, or do any other business elsewhere, on any day set apart for rest by his conscience and religion. There seems to be little necessity for other legislation, except under peculiar local circumstances to which town and city magistrates are better able than members of State and national legislatures to do justice. The question, what places of business that have no vicious tendencies ought to be allowed to open on Sunday, might settle itself, as does the question how early they are to close on other days of the week. There needs no law to prevent business being done at night. Stores which could offer nothing that many people need to buy on Sunday, would have so few customers that the proprietors could ill afford to open their doors. Where the demand is as great and innocent as it is for fresh meat and fruit in hot weather, the interest of the proprietor is no more plain than is the duty of the legislator and magistrate. People employed in hotels, stables, telegraph offices, libraries, museums, and parks, can, of course, protect themselves from overwork, as domestic servants do, by stipulating for holidays and half-holidays. Whatever may be the gain to public health from cessation of labour and business on Sunday, there is no such advantage, but rather injury, from the prohibition of healthy recreations and amusements, which are acknowledged to be perfectly innocent on at least six days of the week. Sunday is by no means so strictly observed, especially in this respect, on the continent of Europe as in the United States. Sabbatarianism is peculiarly an American and British institution; and this fact justifies the position that it is by no means a necessary condition of the security, or even the welfare, of civilised nations. If our Sunday laws cannot be proved to be necessary, they must be admitted to be oppressive. Over-taxation is but a slight grievance compared with the tyranny of sending men and women to jail for inability or unwillingness to pay the fines imposed in 1895 by the State of Tennessee for working on their farms, or in Massachusetts soon after for playing cards in their own rooms. Further consideration of the question, what amusements should be permitted on Sunday, will be found in an appendix.