and love are merged in mercy; where the clients all plead guilty and the lawyer's "occupation gone." "The Sabbath is the bulwark of our liberties, because it is the bulwark of our morality."-DANIEL WEBSTER. THE SABBATH Note: The following article was prepared with much care and published a short time after the expiration of the writer's term as judge of the Criminal Court. It gives a true history of the enforcement of the Sunday law at Kansas City for a period of fourteen months, and until the writer left the bench. It also contains, as a result of diligent research during those fourteen months, a complete summary of the law with reference to the observance of Sunday. In America the Sabbath is both a religious and a civic institution, and it is impossible for either minister or layman to properly understand a problem, which, just at this time, is most vitally affecting both Church and State, without knowing what the law is. It is hoped that the statutes, the teachings of the sages of our jurisprudence and decisions of our Courts as herein cited, may be helpful to inquirers who love our Christian civilization and who desire to fight intelligently those who are striving to destroy it. The Sabbath is the bulwark of our liberties, because it is the bulwark of our morality.-Daniel Webster. The question of Sabbath observance is for the masses of the people preeminently the most important of all questions.-William E. Gladstone. HISTORY OF THE FIGHT. HE FIGHT for the observance of Sunday in Kansas City was prosecuted without abatement for fourteen months, and has been given constant though often incorrect notice by the public press throughout the United States. Situated for many years at what was then the extreme edge of metropolitan settlement, Kansas City has known something of tumult, but those who have lived here since it was a trading post for Indians, Mexicans and cowboys say that this was by all odds the fiercest struggle in its history. The writer was the principal object of attack, both in this and in the three years' fight which overthrew the "Missouri Outlaws," probably the shrewdest band of robbers the world has known, and in his judgment the conflict for the Sabbath was the intenser of the two. The outlaw fight was that of a young prosecutor in Kansas City, backed by every officer of the court, by the police force, and, during most of the time, by the State administration. The Sunday fight has been that of the judge of a Criminal Court, battling single handed and alone with every executive officer of his court and of the Police Department of our city standing neutral or waving the black flag in absolute defiance of the law. The latter was a struggle, too, in which the law was at a peculiar disadvantage, many of its friends, under ordinary circumstances, deserting it at the behest of that most powerful seducer of modern times, Commercialism. For years Sunday had been the best day in the seven for money getting, and they could not find it in their hearts to give it up. any It should be observed, too, that no large city in the Union presented a severer test for the enforced observance of Sunday than our own metropolis. Our imperial young city-long live her wide-awake, enterprising, progressive spirit-possesses as large a proportion of honest, cultured, law-abiding citizens municipality on the globe. But while this is true, there still lurks here something of that feeling, at one time considered almost necessary in the West, that every man has the inalienable right to be his own judge as to what is lawful or unlawful, while the marvelous growth of our city, and the vast treasure being yearly poured into her lap, has attracted criminals from every spot beneath the sun. As they flocked to Paris while Napoleon was filling her with his booty; as they followed the eagles to Rome to share the plunder of the Cæsars, so criminals come to Kansas City to swindle or steal or idle or riot midst the honest abundance a region as rich as the valley of the Nile is constantly laying at her feet. But despite the adverse conditions just named Sundayclosing in Kansas City has been a magnificent victory for the law, and has done great good not only here, but also by spreading to the country west and south of us, and to many other parts of the Union. The writer has been repeatedly asked to give an account of this contest, and it is now done for the first time. The fight was brought on by a charge to the Grand Jury delivered by the writer September 30, 1907, and continued without abatement until he left the bench in December, 1908. After giving the usual instructions as to felonies and misdemeanors, they were told to return indictments for violations of all laws on the statute books, including Section 2243, forbidding the sale of goods on Sunday except articles of immediate necessity, and Section 2240, forbidding labor on Sunday "except the household offices of daily necessity or other works of necessity and charity." These are identical, in substance, with statutes found in most of the States. They had only been enforced, it was said, once before |