Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/33

 WILSON V. WINTER. 21 �tract, either express or implied, which ihe courts will enforce against me to repay the amount, not even though I renew the promise on a subsequent week-day, because the contract be- jng void there can be no affirmation, there being nothing to be affirmed. This may be, and doubtless is, from the promises assumed, logical enough, but it will not be claimed for the law, as it stands, that it metes out a very exalted species of justice. The statute simply provides that any person who shall do any labor or business on the first day of the week, except Works of necessity and charity, shall pay a fine of $10, �The law itself, for what it was intended, which was to make the doing of labor on Sunday a m isdemeanor, is, as every- body knows, a dead letter on the statute book. It is too often violated by persons belonging to almost ail classes, and during a residence of over a quarter of a century in the state I have never known a single prosecution under it. The statute is never invoked except by defaulting defendants, who are seeking to take advantage of their own wrong to defeat and get rid of paying a just debt. But I know of no decis- ion, and have been ref erred to none on the argument of this cause, that holds a contract void because one party, unknown to the other, in the private recesses of his own home, draws up and signs a mortgage on Sunday, dates and acknowl- edges it on a week-day, and on a week-day consummates a contract for the borrowing of money, on the faith of the mortgage, with a person who is innocent of any knowledge that the law bas been violated. Such law would indeed be a disgrace to the jurisprudence of any age or country, That is ijust this case, and I think it safe to say that the statute will be fully vindicated by a prosecution and fine of the offending parties in a court of justice of the peace, with- out punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty by a forfeiture of the sum loaned. �The vital defect in the defendant's defence is that it is not true. The contract was not made on Sunday. The draw- ing up and execution of the bond and mortgage were a step necessary for the defendants to take in order to consummate ��� �