The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-10-14
BLUE LAWSr DID EXIST.
Lawyer Newton Assails The Integrity Of COnnecticut's Old Time
 Statutes
(RepriDted by Request. )

Attorney Henry G. Newton of New Haven has a bias in favor of quaint and curious archaeological things. has accompanied some deep sea dredging in the Elm City archives lately, grop- ing after the authentic story of the famous old Blue Laws of the Nut meg commonwealth. He came up out of the depths a day or two ago, and having divested himself of his antiquarian armor, furnished to the New Haven Historical society the complete story of his findings.
 MT. NewtOn'S report was pretty nearly as long as the moral law, and a vast deal more entertaining. To be- there is no such thing as blue laws anyhow-they are an out-and-out myth, just lake the rest of the treas ured and trusted traditions of the world. In the second place, he al- legee, what blue laws there are are simply and solely an Elm City insti- tuition.
 Attorney Newton says that the old tory minister, the Rev. Sam Peters, who ran the English church in Hart ford and in Hebron villase, among the wild hills to the east of that town about the time of the Revolution, was to blame for all the blue laws ever enacted; that New Hayen's al- 1eged code of bluish acts was fic- tion of his ingenious but splenetic and malicious brain.
 The Rev. Samuel, who was English through and through, was not at ali fond of his sharp witted and cute but sombre Nvisaged Yankee parishioners and neighbors and so, after the coun- try, ringing with the peelS of liber ty bells, had become too warm to hold even tory clergyman comfort ably and he had scudded back to England, he promptly sat down to his table and wrote his rancid book of s~-1r 1rzlxr That was son1evheEe Hbp ut S1, and his famed andswonderful work, which is now one of the curiosities of the earth, embodied more than two scores of the very bluest blue laws-of twisted forged cast steel, copper riv- gearings-all the blue laws in fact, that have been imputed to the ham, diwork of blue long nosed, lean and vinegar visaged Yankees.
 Many. years ago.. said Lawyer Newton in discussing the subject, "a blue laws, which were really extracts from Peters history, was published, and is even now referred to as au- thority by the unsuspicious. 1 saw them, and my anger was kindled, for does not every dictionary and ency- clopaedia say they are humbug and a fraud, and has not TrumbulPs Blue Laws, True and False put an end to the infamous islander. And so IL seems to be time to say something about blue laws.
 Now, then, the, existence of such a code of blue laws is fully disproved; in fact, the only authority in it's fa- vor is Peters himself, who is un- trustworthy. Peters History of Con- necticut-the blue laws are embodied therein-was first published in Lon don in 17S1. It was put forth an- onymously ,and its title page bore the inscription, By a Gentleman of the Province That it's author hated Con- necticut is hardly to be doubted and New Haven appears to have been foremost among the objects of his detestation. My special purpose is to show how much of Peters blue laws was actually in force in New Haven before the union of the New Haven colony with the colony of Connecticut, how much a hundred. years thereat- ter and how much now"
 To that end he minutely and speci- fically examined each one of Samuel Peters forty-five blue laws, and