Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1879 — Vermont Sunday Laws. [ARTICLE]

Vermont Sunday Laws.

rom the Troy Budget. “GoodfßoeietyT” a Springfield, Mass., magazine, has an article on tlie Sunday laws of New England, in which a quotation is made from the Revised Statutes of Vermont of 1870. We notice that one provision, that against visiting Sunday, is more stringent than any prohibition in the Suuday laws of any other State. The laws provides that:

“If any person shall between 12 o’clock of the night preceding the first day of the week and the setting of the sun on the same day * * * visit from house to house, except it be from motives of humanity or charity, or for moral or religious edification, he shall pay a fine not exceeding $2.” The good Vermonters who passed the above law, making it criminal to pay visits on Sunday, took good care not to interfere With the general practice of “sparking” after sundown on the Holy Sabbath day. As the law now stand if a clergyman takes dinner at the house of one es his parishoners and take tea with another before dark of a Sunday, he would be liable to be hauled up like a common culprit and fined $2 ror the crime. It may be interesting for the Troy and Boston and Delaware and Hudson, as well as other railroads that run Sunday trains into Vermont, to know that each passenger carried lays himself, or herself, liabel to a fine of $2. The following is the Vermont law on the.subject: “No person shall travel on the Sabbath or first day of the week except from necessity or charity, aud every person so offending snail pay a 4ine not exceeding two dollars.” The law of New York in relation to Sunday travel is nearly as stringent as that of Vermont. The New York law defines “necessity” in the matter of travel as “going to or from a place of worship within a distance of twenty miles, going for medical aid or medicines, visiting the sick, carrying mails, going expressly by order of some public of officer, and removing a family when commenced on somejotherday.” All other “travel” except riding to church on horse cars is in the nature of a misdemeanor, punishable by fine or imprisonment in case of inability to pay fine. The statutes of New York do not prohibit the of horse cars and such like for "the purpose of conveying people to and from church, for the law defines such travel as a necessity. It is under the laws of New York then a “necessity” to travel on the horse cars to church, but a misdemeanor to travel on the horse cars or otherwise into the country on Suuday to get a mouthful of fresh air. Thanks to the intelligence and liberality of the age this is a law in New York “more honored in the breach than in the observance.’? And New Yorkers, too, unlike Vermonters, thanks to our more liberal laws, may visit their neighbors on “a Sabba’ day” “from house to house” without being liable to pay $2 fine for the luxury.