ennessee, had this conscientious, God-fearing man arrested as a
common felon, and convicted of the heinous crime (?) of
Sabbath-breaking by plowing on Sunday. He appealed to the Supreme
Court, and the sentence was affirmed. Then the Adventists and the
National Secular Association took up the case. Hon. Don M. Dickinson
was engaged as counsel, and the case was taken to the Federal Court
last November on a writ of habeas corpus, the contention being that
the conviction was contrary to the bill of rights of Tennessee and the
Constitution of the United States, and that the defendant was held
prisoner by the sheriff without due process of law. The application
was argued several months ago, and Judge Hammond has had it under
advisement until recently, when his decision was given in which the
defendant was remanded back to the custody of the sheriff to pay the
fine or serve the time according to the sentence. This decision holds
that malice, religious or otherwise, may dictate a prosecution, but if
the law has been violated this fact does not shield the law-breaker.
Neither do the courts require that there shall be some moral obloquy
to support a given law before enforcing it, and it is not necessary to
maintain that to violate the Sunday observance customs shall be of
itself immoral to make it criminal in the eyes of the law.

Suggestive, indeed, are the lessons of this great judicial crime
against liberty, justice, and God. In the first place it illustrates
the fact which must long since have become apparent to thinking men
that the guarantee of the Constitution of the United States, which,
more than aught else, has made this Republic the flower of all
preceding nations, is yearly becoming less and less regarded by the
small men and narrow minds who interpret law and who, instead of
showing how unconstitutional any law is which violates the great
charter of right, yield to the present craze for Governmental
Paternalism, paying no more heed to our Constitution than if it was
the ukase of a Czar. In numerous instances during the past decade has
this solemn fact been emphasized, until it is evident that with the
reaction toward Paternalism and centralization has come the old time
spirit of intolerance and moral obloquy on the part of the governing
powers which has been one of the chief curses of the ages, entailing
indescribable misery on the noblest and best, and holding in
subjection the vanguard of progress, which always has