dlord 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.
Such Sunday legislation is a fair evidence of the absence of true
religion, and the predominance of hypocrisy. It is not enforced, and
is not expected to be. All the Sunday legislation in New York did not
prevent the immense Syracuse Salt Works from carrying on their work
day and night. Gov. Hill and the N. Y. Legislature have shown their
character by increasing the penalties of the Sunday laws, but they
have not approached the Massachusetts standard.
A BILL TO DESTROY THE INDIANS.
From the Boston Pilot.
The Puritans of New England and the Cavaliers of Virginia alike
treated the Indians as though they had no rights of manhood. The
Catholics, Baptists, and Quakers treated them kindly and justly. The
Puritans took Indian lands without permission or compensation. The
Catholics, Baptists and Quakers bought lands from the Indians in an
honorable way.
The two policies have been in conflict for nearly three centuries.
The Government has held to the policy of buying lands from the
Indians, thus recognizing their ownership; but i
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