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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

A petition, to the Congress of the United States, from the towns of...

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 402

A PETITION,

TO THE

Congress of the United States,

FROM THE TOWNS OF

SMITHFIELD AND FENNER,

MADISON COUNTY, (N.Y.)

ON THE SUBJECT OF SABBATH MAILS, &c.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES.

YOUR Petitioners, inhabitants of the towns of Smithfield and Fenner, in the State of New-York, pray that the laws, regulating the postoffice department, may be so amended, as not to require the transmission of the mail, and the opening of post-offices, on the Lord's Day.

Your Petitioners are not moved to make this prayer, by the belief that these laws contravene the Federal Constitution. They have no such belief; and erroneous as it is, and fraught with such injurious disrespect for the Government, they deeply regret, that it should be entertained by any, and especially by some, who have shown themselves, capable of urging it so plausibly on the public mind. These laws, in the services which they require of Postmasters, on the Lord's Day, are charged with applying to them that "religious test," prohibited in the Constitution. But once admit the principle, that an office created by our Government is unconstitutional, because there is some order or class of men amongst us, who religiously scruple at its terms and duties, and what constitutional offices are left to us? The religious creed which is opposed to war, and which is embraced by hundreds of thousands of our citizens, would then make unconstitutional every military office; and in the whole list of civil offices, where is there one, that would not fall into unconstitutionality, before the religion of the Sabbatarian? We think none will pretend, that the formers of our Consti-

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tution intended to restrain the National Legislature from every enactment, that might possibly offend any affected or sincere religious scruples; and we think none will pretend that Congress, in prescribing the terms and duties of the office of postmaster, designed the application of a "religious test." That some are now restrained by conscientious motives from accepting the office of postmaster, is, indeed, a consideration in favour of the proposed amendment; but a consideration quite too small to justify the prominence which has been given to it, in not a few of the petitions before you. Sympathy with the pecuniary interest of here and there an individual, whose conscience requires him to forego the office of postmaster, forms too narrow a basis for a petition to redress an evil, which is so emphatically and fearfully national, as that in question. Nor is it the partial and disfranchising operation, in such cases, of the post-office laws; but it is the vital suffering, under these laws, of the great moral and political interests of the nation, that has so generally aroused your constituents to pray for their amendment.

Nor do we take the ground of those who declare these laws to be void, because they are opposed to the precepts of christianity. Whether the doctrine of the English Courts, that christianity is a part of the law of the land, be sound; whether that doctrine be fairly deducible from the truth, that certain offences against the christian religion are also offences against the common law - does not at all affect the validity of the laws under consideration. These are not the laws of a State, where the common law obtains; but they are among the laws passed in pursuance of the Federal Constitution; which laws, together with the Constitution and our treaties, are declared, by the Constitution itself, to be the supreme law of the land. Now this supreme law is so far from receiving christianity by its side, as a coordinate or paramount authority, that it does but faintly and indirectly recognise her existence; and certainly, so far as that law is concerned, its subjects are as free to be Infidels, or Jews, as Christians. And, in this respect, we confess ourselves to be fully satisfied with that supreme law; and we hope the time may never come, when our Federal Courts will be occupied in applying the Bible to our laws, to determine whether they are valid or void. But it is asked, "Must a man; then, surrender his conscience and religion, when a law of mere human authority requires him to go counter to them?" We reply - by no means; and that, notwithstanding our national compact has been voluntarily entered into

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by ourselves and our fathers - yet if, in its operation, it gives offence to the conscience and religion of a single individual, we do not ask hire to sacrifice them. There is, however, no very small proportion of his countrymen in his situation. The Quaker, under the collision between the civil government and his religious creed, suffers many disabilities, and for conscience sake, consents to be despoiled of his goods by the collector of war-taxes. But, if the conscience of the individual in question demands something more than the passiveness of the Quaker, let him then labour, as he is free to do, to change the nature and measures of the Government into an accordance with his views. If this does not content him, and all other remedies fail, expatriation alone remains to him.

Having thus disclaimed two of the grounds taken by our fellow petitioners, and, as the peculiarity of the case seemed to require, given our reasons for doing so, we proceed to state those on which we rest our prayer.

No nation can prosper - can even be held together, by virtue of a political compact merely. France alone has attempted it; and it cost the blood of hundreds of thousands of her subjects, to attest the failure of her experiment, and the indispensableness of auxiliary moral and religious influences. Christianity is admitted to be the very soul of the systems of morals and religion in our country; and, therefore, whether these systems, or even christianity itself, be true or false, sound or superstitious, happily or unhappily chosen by us, it is still equally certain, that if christianity is once annihilated in our land, we shall be left, like revolutionary France, when she had annihilated it, utterly destitute of moral and religious control, and in a condition as much worse than that of the heathen nations, as the restraints of their systems of superstition and idolatry are preferable to blank atheism and unrepressed wickedness. But christianity can no more survive in a land, that refuses her the Sabbath, than can animal life in an atmosphere deprived of oxygen. Languishing amidst the ungenial pursuits of the secular days of the week, she vitally needs the return of that holy one, in which she can refresh herself with breathings of her native air. Look over all Christendom, and it will be found, that the christian religion flourishes or declines, precisely according to the strict or lax observance of the Sabbath; and the spot where the Sabbath is totally neglected, is the spot where christianity has expired.-

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Our Government might supply every family in the United States with a copy of the bible, and every neighborhood with a house of worship and the gospel ministry; and yet, if they had the power, and should exert it, to abolish the Sabbath, it would be found, that all these bibles and churches and ministers would avail no more, than the labour expended on a soil, which lies under the curse of perpetual drought and barrenness.

Now, we charge the laws in question with secularising and destroying the Sabbath. We charge them so wrongly, if the work they require on that day is necessary. But can the speeding of business intelligence on that day, for the accommodation of the handful of men in our principal towns, who choose to have the current of their worldly concerns flowing on through every day of the week, be called a necessary work? Or if it can be, still is it necessary for this work to be done by the nation? In that city, which is by far the first in Christendom, both in numbers and commerce, it is not regarded as necessary to open the post-office, or send out a mail, on the Lord's Day. One argument for the necessity of the work, is, that but for it, some might occasionally come into the so much earlier possession of important commercial intelligence, as to have a great advantage over others. It is very questionable, however, whether Sunday mails do lessen the instances of this advantage; and even if they do, what better is the argument for them, than that an immensely great evil may be substituted for an insignificantly small one? And after all, what is the advantage complained of, compared with that which they, Who avail themselves of Sunday mails, acquire over the many, whose consciences will not permit them to go to the post-office on the Sabbath? This work is called necessary, also, because it affords facilities for conveying persons and intelligence, in cases of sickness and other distress. But it is the main objects, and not the incidents, of a business, which stamp its character; and that character, in the present instance, is no more relieved, by the occasional resort, in cases of real necessity, to the expedition and convenience of the mail stage, than is the character of the slave-trade, by the innocent passengers or the useful intelligence, which its ships may chance to carry.

There are those, who abandon the plea of strict necessity for this work on the Lord's Day, and yet see nothing very alarming in the nature or extent of this violation of it. We differ widely from them; and

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in the 20 to 30,000 persons directly, and the many times that number indirectly, employed in this violation, and still more, in the invitation and sanction, which this authorised, this national profanation of this holy day, gives to other abuses of it, we see such a flood of worldliness rising upon the Sabbath, as must either soon abate or sweep down its barriers, and leave it undistinguishable from other days.

We admit, of course, that it is no part of the direct business of our National Legislature to promote our great moral and religious interests ; but we are not so squeamish as they are, in whose eyes that Legislature is so rigidly and purely political, that it may, in no wise, regard these interests; not even for their subservience to our political welfare. Farther still, are we from agreeing with such, as seem to have imbibed the idea, that Congress can be innocent, in directly and knowingly trampling upon these interests. We need say no more than we have said, to show the indispensableness of these interests to the very existence of our political institutions ; and the position, that because the trusts of Congress are exclusively civil, they are at liberty to execute these trusts, in ways derogatory and ruinous to the great moral and political interests of the nation, is too palpably fallacious to require a moment's refutation. Great as is the blessing of civil government, it would be far too dearly bought by us, if the security of these interests cannot consist with the operation of that government. And what, indeed, we may ask, but the security of these interests, is the principal object of the institution of civil government? As insufficient an excuse would Congress have for executing their trusts, in a manner so wasteful of our most precious possessions, as the man whom we had employed to recover our stray animal, would have, for breaking down our fences, trampling down our crops; and killing our horse, in his reckless accomplishment of his petty agency.

The proposed amendment of the laws in question, cannot be made, it is said, without encroaching on the rights of conscience of those, who do not regard the Lord's Day as peculiarly holy time. Your Petitioners say to such persons - "We ask for no laws to restrain you from circulating intelligence on the Sabbath, even though you should go so far, as to disturb, by your expresses, the holy stillness of that day, in every part of the land. We only ask, if this must be done, let it be done at your own charges, and on your own responsibility, instead of ours, as it now is, through our representatives and agents. Break the

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Sabbath yourselves, if you will ; but do not compel us to break it for you. Besides, we would have you bear in mind, that you, who do not believe in the peculiar sacredness of the Sabbath, comprise but a small minority of our citizens, and that it is but a still smaller fraction of this small minority, who find a convenience in this profanation of the day." It is in such language, that we attempt to show, that it is the advocates of this profanation, and not the opposers of it, who are guilty of intolerance, and that the sufferings of conscience in the case, are all with us, and none with them. As well, certainly, might the complaint be raised, that the suspension of judicial and legislative business on the Sabbath encroaches on the rights of conscience, as that the suspension of the business of the post-office on that day would do so; and the Making of the complaint in the one case, and not in the others, is as glaringly inconsistent, as it is for the Government not to suspend the ,one business, and yet to continue to suspend the others.

It may be said, that the Sabbatarians might, with as much propriety, as characterises our petition, solicit Congress to suspend the business of the post-office on their Sabbath also. We reply, that whenever Sabbatarians shall become such a large majority of the people of the United States, as we are, it will be the duty of the Government to make the seventh, instead of the first day of the week, the day of rest from its business ; and we would extend still farther liberality to them, and have the government, provided it be possible to transact its business on five days of the week, suspend it on the seventh, as well as the first, whenever the Sabbatarians shall have multiplied to the number of one half or even one third of our citizens.

It is said, also, that the adoption of the proposed amendment would lead to an union of Church and State ; and the charge has come down from "high places," to chime with the popular slam, that your Petitioners meditate, and, in their present movement, are striving after this union. The slander merits no refutation, until some proof is adduced, that your insulted Petitioners cherish this design, and until some plausible reasoning construes their present application into a step towards the accomplishment of it. In the mean time, however, we beg to turn this very weapon upon those, who employ it against us; and we say, history bears us witness, that christianity, in the power and purity we would preserve to her, by having that day, in which, it may almost be said, she " lives, and moves, and has her being," kept holy, has

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not only never sought, but has always sensitively shrunk from an union with the authority of the state; whilst, on the other hand, she has courted that unholy alliance, wherever, by secularised Sabbaths or other causes, she had lost her true spirit, and become worldly and corrupt. Probably ours is the first age and - the first country, in which the absurd charge has been made, that the advocates for keeping the Sabbath holy seek an union of church and state.

Thus far we have urged our prayer on grounds of political necessity merely; and we flatter ourselves, that enough has been said to show, both that the Sabbath is indispensable to our continued national existence, and that you can save it from the desecration we complain of, without violating the Constitution, or any of your trusts, or any of your duties to your constituents. But there is an infinitely higher reason for the success of our prayer, than any we have offered. Essential as the Sabbath is, in the affairs of this life, it is, in its relation to the things of the life to come, and in its office to prepare us for blessedness beyond the grave, unspeakably more important. It is God's holy day; and it is his own voice, which commands us to "remember it, to keep it holy." It is a day to be spent in the religious service of Him who declares, that "the kingdom and nation, that will not serve Him, shall perish."

Let us conjure you, then, by the memory of those holy men who planted this nation, because they preferred the savage wilderness to a land of profaned Sabbaths and corrupted Christianity; by the memory of our fathers, whose piety, as emphatically as their wisdom and blood, contributed to secure the independence, and to frame the government,, under which we live ; by your regard for the hundreds of thousands of your constituents, to whose religious faith the Sabbath is even more dear than their lives; and lastly, let us conjure you, by that final accountability, which will be no less rigid in the public and official, than in the private acts of men, to spare the Sabbath, and the inestimable temporal and eternal blessings that are bound up in it.

PETERBORO, December, 1829.