St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-18
WHAT TT ALL TEACHES.

One gets a pretty accurate meas
ure of the progress in liberality OF
our race by comparing the "blue
laws" standing on our statute books
and in the ordinances of our cities,
with the Indifference with which they
are treated by the citizenry. From
prohibition of the manufacture and
sale Of liquor down through statutes
forbidding works Of anything but
charity or strict necessity on Sun
day, to the curfew ordinances that
bid children be at home after
o'clock at night, one turns to see
liquor openly sold in prohibition
states; to see work, not Of charity
or necessity, done everywhere on
Sunday, and the boys playing hide
and seek at unseemly hours long
after the curfew bell has rung. There
is hardly a city to be found among
whose ordinances is not to be found
one that forbids the sale Of liquor
or the opening Of a saloon on Sunday
for the transaction of it's business,
and there is hardly a city to be
found in which one cannot get in a
saloon what liquor he may desire on
any of the fifty-two Sundays of the
year.
Such is the state law of New York.
It is as stringent as can be drawn.
Recently there came into control a
police commission that enforced, or
sought to enforce, the law in New
York city. One has but to glance
over the editorial columns of the pa
| pers of that state to ascertain the
| effect of the attempted enforcement
| of a law which reflects only the senti-
ment of the few and is opposed to
| the wishes of the mass. And, with
the entire police force of the city at
its command, the law cannot be uni
versally enforced. 1t is evaded in
many ways. Brooklyn saloons thrive
on their added business gained from
! New York. No Roosevelt in the lat
ter city tries to put the state law
! viewed the legislators who voted for
| the law. Only one of them admits
| that he voted for it with the hope
| and expectation that it would be
| enforced. The others openly own that
| they voted for it as a concession to
| the temperance people, and without
any idea that it would receive
strict and literal construction.
All this occurring in New York and
existing everywhere only shows the
utter futility of any law that does
not rest in right reason; which Coke
long ago said, sis the life of the law, 4"
! and which is not the mere formula
ton of the dominant reason of the
| community. Such laws are the futile
and irritating contest of sentiment
with sense in which sentiment uses
force instead Of suasion to attain its
| ends. They are survivals, in a senile
state, of ideas once lusty, when men
believed that other men could be
made moral and virtuous and sober
| and religious if the law said they
must be. Political economy super
sedes the old sumptuary laws, but
some of these old ideas 1inger yet
to serve no other purpose than to
mark the growth Of liberality, of
sounder sense and their own i'm
| practicability. They are the result
! of the insistence of the intractable
few with medieval ideas upon the
complaisant majority of legislators;
who consent TO their demands as the
easiest way Of getting rid of an an
noyance, and who, like the New
York members, have no idea that the
law viii be anything but a dead let
ter.
And then, when some one tries to
| enforce them, there comes the cry Of
respect for the law: 1t is the law,
| therefore it must be obeyed. And
! the result is. whether enforced or
| allowed to sleep, a disrespect for the
law; and not only that law. but, by
a. process of Infection, OF ali law,
| which extends to the courts that ad-