Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1886 — Massachusetts Blue Laws. [ARTICLE]

Massachusetts Blue Laws.

There are some very queer laws on the Massachusetts statute book, the striking anomaly about which is that they have been continually re-enacted, but they are seldom, if ever, er forced. By those laws, for example, traveling, not only on Sunday, but on Saturday evening, is forbidden, save in cases of necessity or charity. Any innkeeper is liable to be fined who on Sunday entertains, or allows about his place, any persons other than travelers, strangers, or lodgers. It is forbidden, on that day, to keep open any shop, save for necessity or charity. Dancing on Sunday is punishable by a fine, the amount being SSO for each offense. It is, moreover, unlawful to be present at any unlicensed entertainment “other than sacred” on either Saturday or Sunday evenings. Now, Gen. Grant used to say that the best way to procure the jjepeal of objectionable laws was to enforce them. But this method of relief seems, by common consent, to have been avoided as impracticable in Boston; and so Mr. Josiah Quincy and some 600 other co-signatories in Boston have sent in a petition for the formal repeal of the laws. The powers of oratory of U. S. Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, are universally acknowledged. Where, even in Demosthenes, could there be words more eloquent than these? “ I consider St. Jacobs Oil a splendid remedy. I suffered from rheumatism of the back. I used St. Jacobs Oil, which gave me instantaneous relief, and then cured me.”