Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/136

128 at war with the habits, and disagreeable to the tastes, of the people who gave him his privilege of citizenship. And there is another plea, equally absurd, which is made on the same subject not only in this country but in England. For instance, in one of our leading journals, the fact that on a recent occasion, Queen Victoria, having a somewhat larger party than usual at dinner on Sunday at Windsor Castle, regaled them after they had left the table with the music of the band, was made the ground of a charge of inconsistency, and of a tirade against oppression, and aristocracy, and privileged classes. The Queen and her ladies and gentlemen in waiting, it was said, may have a band to play to them on Sunday evening; but this gratification is strictly prohibited by law to all her Majesty's subjects. If the same music had been played at any concert or music hall in London at the same hour, the manager would have been liable to a fine of one thousand pounds, and would have been duly prosecuted by the Sabbath Observance Society. The cases compared are not at all parallel, and that they are not so is apparent from the fact that the pleasure enjoyed by the Queen and her guests is prohibited by law to all her subjects, is untrue. Every one of her subjects, the very humblest, has the same right that the Queen has to enjoyment of music on Sunday evening; and of this right hundreds of thousands avail themselves. That right is to have and to enjoy as good music as they are able to obtain in any way for themselves in their private apartments. The Queen has a band, because she can afford to have one; some noblemen have bands; almost every regiment has one: people who cannot afford bands have a piano forte, a quartette of stringed instruments, or a chorus in which the performers are sometimes paid professional persons, but generally amateurs. Others divert themselves with a melodeon, an accordeon, a flute, or a fife; and the right of all these people to have this various music on Sunday evening is as well assured as the Queen's—as well assured as their right to breathe. All that the law interferes with in England in regard to music, and all that it interferes with in any part of the United States in regard to drinking, is in regard to the transaction of public business on that day. If it is wrong for the law to control the transaction of public business at all, to insist that hackmen and that bar keepers shall be licensed, and that promissory notes and contracts shall not be legal if made on Sunday, then it is wrong to insist that theatres and concert rooms and bar rooms shall be closed on Sunday, but not otherwise. With the policy of the question we have not here to do, but only with the strange confusion of private and public transactions. But many people cannot afford to have a band or to have wine and brandy upon a nice dinner table, and must they therefore be deprived of the privilege of going to a concert or a tavern on Sunday evening? We do not say that they should be so deprived, but only that the fact that they are unable to afford music and conviviality at home is not an argument against the right of a legislature to close theatres and bar rooms on Sunday. People suffer many other deprivations from the lack of money. They cannot afford pictures, a library, or costly clothing; and they might just as well, therefore, protest against being deprived of these. If laws operate equally, and every man is allowed the free enjoyment of his own, while he does not interfere with the liberty of others, there can be no reasonable complaints of injustice, although there may be grave doubts as to policy.

there be one phrase which more than any other may be set down as an Americanism, and an Americanism of the worst kind, it is "on this continent." If a speaker or a writer of a certain type wishes to say that something is or was very big, or very remarkable, or very terrible, he says