the laws against liquor selling, but others even more necessary for our safety, would be much better enforced if we did not encourage lawlessness by keeping up statutes which our best men and women violate without scruple and with impunity, or which actually prevent good people from taking such recreation as they know they ought to have. Outgrown ordinances should not be suffered to drag just and necessary laws down into contempt. "Nobody wants to revive those old laws of Massachusetts Bay which forbade people to wear lace, or buy foreign fruit, or charge more than a fixed price for a day's work. No more Quakers will ever swing from a Boston gallows merely for preaching. But our laws against Sunday amusements are in the same spirit as that which hung Mary Dyer. In old times, government kept continually telling people what to do, and took especial pains to make them go to church on Sunday. If they stayed away, they were fined; if they did not become members, they were not allowed to vote; if they got up rival services, they were hung; if they took any amusement on Sunday, they were whipped. All four classes of laws for the same unjust end have passed away, except that against Sunday recreation. This still survives in a modified form. But even in this shape it is utterly irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of our government. All American legislation, from the Declaration of Independence, rests on the great truth that our government is founded in order to secure us in our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our State is a limited partnership for mutual protection. We carry it on in order to make our freedom more complete; and we tolerate no restrictions on ourselves except such as are necessary conditions of the greatest possible liberty. These principles are already fully acknowledged on six days of the week, but only partly on the seventh. Still, there is a growing recognition of the likeness between laws against Sunday amusements and such prohibitions of eating meat in Lent as once caused people to be burned alive." A weekly day of rest is a blessing; but David Swing is right in saying that "Absolute rest, perfectly satisfactory to horse and dog, is not adequate to the high nature of man." Complete torpor of mind and body is more characteristic of a Hindoo fakir than of a Christian saint. Should those who wish to rest as much as possible on Sunday sleep in church? There is nothing irreligious in fresh air. The tendency of outdoor exercise to purify and elevate our thoughts is so strong that Kingsley actually defended playing cricket on Sunday as "a carrying out of the divineness of the Sabbath." If there is no hostility between religion and amusement on six days of the week, there cannot be much on the seventh.