The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1897-08-03
OUR OLD BLUE Law
Lawyer speer Traces II
Back in New Jersey
to 1904.
IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE
According to Recent Discoveries
the Law Dates Back 4,5O0
Years or More.
IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE

William H. Speer, Jr., of the counsel
for the members of the Arlington Base
ball Club, who We're arrested for the pur-
pose of testing the old blue laws. has pre-
pared the following interesting and COM
prehensive history of the famous statute
for The News" He says
That the exact position of the ball
players arrested and about to be tried
for the alleged violation of the act con-
corning vice and immortality, may not be
misunderstood. a statement of it may not
be malapropos.
There a been vague rumors afloat
that the players questioned the consti-
~tutionality of THE act. / am firmly con-
WINGED that any attack upon the con-
stitutionality of the statute would be
doomed to certain defeat. The highest
courts of California, Maryland, New York,
Ohio, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Ar
kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania. Massachu-
sets, Indiana, Nebraska, Michigan, and
probably of other States, nave held
statutes similar to ours to be not repug-
nant to the constitution of their respec-
tive States, or of the United States. While
some of the courts have based their de-
cisions in favor of Sunday laws on re-
ligious grounds. the decisions generally,
especially in recent cases, are based on
the proposition that a Sunday law is a
civil or police regulation.
I'm Lindenmuller v. People, 80 Barbour,
54S. the Court says the Sabbath is older
than our State government. was a part
of the avs of the colony, and it's OBJ
servance regulated by Colonial laws
1.-The above remarks are very peril
,art md onrlioo II ~ n11r ayun State
as well as to New York. At a General
Assembly, held at Burlington. from the
18th day of November to the 18th day of
December, 17O4. in the third year of the
reign of Queen Anne, being the second
assembly of New Jersey, the following
law was passed.
:. Session the First.
"'Chap. II.
IAN Act for suppressing of immortality.
Passed Dec. 18th, 1904.
" Whereas. Profaneness and immortality
lave too much in this Prov
ince, to the shame of Christianity and
the great grief of all good and sober
men; for the suppressing whereof for the
FUTURE
Sect. 1. Be it enacted by the Gov
ernor, Council and Assembly, now met
and assembled, and by the authority of
the same. That all and every person
and persons whatsoever within this Prov
ince, who shall be convicted of drunken
ness, cursing, swearing or breaking the
Lords day by doing n ordinary work
or labor thereon excepting work of ne
cessity or mercy, by information of every
constable within their respective pre-
cincts, or any other person whatsoever
shall be fined, etc.
1.-THE above act was included in the
compilation and publication under the ap-
pointment of the General Assembly by
Samuel Allinson in 1716 and is to be found
in Allinson's laws, pages 8 and 4.
"The frs. constitution of New Jersey
was agreed Ipon in the Provincial Com
gress at Burlington. on July 2, 1776, and
contains this provision.
XXI. That all the avs of this
Province, contained in the edition lately
published by lir. Allison, shall be and
in full force, until altered by the
cepted as are incompatible with this
charter) and shall be, according as here
tofore, regarded in all respects by all
civil officers and others, the good people
of this province. And on September 27.
1882 the Council and General mbly of
the State repealed the act ., May
%, which, in its turn, has led the
aforesaid law of December l., 1904. and
expressly revived the last mentioned law.
The members of the Council and General
Assembly Of New Jersey, throughout the
period from 1a75 to 1888, were substantially
identical with the members who agreed
upon the constitution of 1776 in the
Provincial Congress-, and yet these men
who framed and agreed to the constitu-
ton of I776 recognized the act as being in
force in 1873 by expressly repeating it,
and again in 1882 by expressly reviving
it, although the mere repeating of the re-
pealer was sufficient, proprio vigore, to
revivify the original act, under the maxim
that, the repeater of a repeater revives
the original act
The cardinal rule of construction. is
contemporaries expositio est fortissima
in lega' Ga contemporaneous interpreted
ton is strongest in the lawl, and, look
be no doubt hat it is constitutional.
Therefore, the counsel for the ball-play-
ers, although making numerous, n
probably well founded. objections to the
jurisdiction of the Police Justice in cases
of this character, and to the methods
male as well as female, and the con-
SENATORS of the peace, in attempting to
secure only a partial observance of the
vice and immortality act, demanded, as
of right they might, a jury of six men.
The unsatisfactory result of his jury
trial, and the certainty that no onvic
ton could be obtained in any subsequent
Police Justice to dismiss the subsequent
charges and suggest to the police the adj
visibility of instituting the proceedings
under the one hundred and ninety-second
section of the Crimes act.
THE above resume of the proceedings
that the Act concerning vice and inn
morality is a dead letter on our statute
books, monstrous in theory, u~nadapted
to the time in which we live, impossible
of execution and enforcement by the
courts, and doomed, at no far distant