Chapter II: Part 2

We have of late been very fond of commissions and commissioners. It has been quite a money speculation. We first create an evil and then employ men to inquire into the extent of the mischief. We have sent into the factories, the mines, and the agricultural districts, and children have been expected to answer questions in religion which would have puzzled not a few of our Lords temporal and spiritual; but let our present Sabbath railway system continue, let the Sydenham grounds be open, and other modes of Sabbath slavery be adopted, and we shall soon want a Committee of the House of Commons, and a host of commissioners to inquire into the disease, insanity, crime, ignorance, premature deaths, and frequent accidents connected with railways. It is well known that the late catastrophe on the North-Western line near Oxford, by which six lives were sacrificed, was mainly owing to the immoral character of the driver. This man, with several other drivers and firemen, was drinking and carousing the night before. His wife, the _Daily News_ tells us, had only the day preceding the fatal collision been obliged to flee and take refuge in a neighbour’s house from his violence; and when he mounted the engine, with which he hurried himself so recklessly into destruction, and involved others in his ruin, he had just come from a pothouse, and was under the maddening influence of liquor. It has been my lot, when waiting for night trains, to have to stay for a considerable time in station houses and elsewhere, and there listen to the conversation of drivers, firemen, porters, and others; and the profanity and obscenity would hardly have been surpassed by pagans. And is it any wonder, seeing Sabbath breaking, in many cases, must be an essential trait in the character of the servants of our different railway companies?

No man who reverences and worships God will break his commandments by working on the Sabbath, and therefore in a very little time no truly religious person will have anything to do with railways; and hence it will come to this, that the lives and property of millions of Her Majesty’s subjects will be entrusted to Sabbath breakers who neither “fear God nor regard man.” Formerly we were taught that Sabbath desecration led to every vice; but now, forsooth, all kinds of good are to flow from the transgression of the command of the King of Kings, and the whole community is to be placed, to a great extent, at the mercy of those who are prohibited by their masters from having any mercy on themselves.

Volumes upon volumes of facts, my Lord, might be written to show that without a Sabbath you cannot have a _healthy_ or _moral_ population. And surely I need not spend any time to prove that _health_ and _morality_ are essential to national prosperity and greatness. People destitute of health cannot be strong and enterprising; and citizens without good morals will bring themselves to ruin by their own vices. Hence the Sabbath was divinely instituted to preserve both. The rest was intended for the invigoration of the body; and the leisure for religious tuition, study, and worship was ordained for the moral edification of the soul; and therefore if you grant royal charters for Sabbath labour, you will shorten the days of the workpeople, and at the same time deprive their minds of the means of religious improvement. On God’s own day you lock up or chain the man from the sanctuary, and then on the week-day you lock the sanctuary from the man! For the sake of Mammon and the Moloch of pleasure, you slay men’s bodies and ruin their souls. Whole hecatombs of human victims are to be immolated for the purpose of increasing the dividends of railway speculators, and gratifying those who delight in Sabbath desecration and in trampling the laws of God under their feet. Wealth is of course valuable, and pleasure desirable, but no one has a right to obtain either of these blessings at the expense of his brother man. Money gained at the risk of the health or life of but a single servant or operative is the price of blood; and that cup of pleasure will end in the bitterest sorrow which was procured by violating the divine injunction, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

You are therefore, my Lord, on the plain principles of humanity, called upon to use your influence that the grounds of the Crystal Palace shall not be opened on the Sabbath. Though you rejected revelation; though you supposed the moral law abolished; though you believed that human senators are prohibited from legislating on any subject on which Jehovah has given a law; yet it would then be your duty to exert yourself to prevent Sunday trading and labour. All persons admit that life and property are proper objects for political laws. Hence you have various sanitary regulations. There are laws respecting public nuisances, drainage, and common sewers: you have statutes prohibiting the keeping of pigs and other animals in cities and towns: you have enactments concerning public houses, gin palaces, putrescent fish and vegetables: you have penalties to protect persons from dangerous footpaths, machinery, and poisonous gases; murder and theft are punishable by law; and neither parents, masters, nor mistresses are allowed to maltreat their children, servants, or dependents. If I mistake not, I was in the House of Commons, when I heard your Lordship advocate the Factory Act; and you have the Ten Hours Bill and laws respecting the labour of women and children in mines and factories: the sale of intoxicating liquors in the Crystal Palace was forbidden; and ale houses are closed until noon on the Lord’s-day; and we have reason to believe that your Lordship approves of all these enactments. And we presume that you do so because all of them, either directly or indirectly, involve the preservation of the health, lives or property of Her Majesty’s subjects. And now, my Lord, upon the very same grounds and reasons we call upon you to interfere in the case of the Sydenham Palace. We know, and you, my Lord, know full well, that higher motives might be urged; but we now pass these by, and simply plead, that the opening of the said pleasure gardens on the Lord’s-day, in consequence of the Sabbath labour that would be attended therewith, would be an infraction of the natural rights of many of your neighbours and fellow citizens, and therefore ought to be prohibited by law.

It is now demonstrated beyond all controversy that man’s body wants rest at the end of every six days. History and physiology, independent of religion, assure us of this fact. If you deny to the horse, the ox, the ass, or the man the rest of the Sabbath, you kill him before his time; and consequently on the same principle of humanity on which you passed “_The Ten Hours Bill_,” and uphold laws against murder, we call on you to defend the clerks, porters, drivers, and other servants of the Sydenham speculators from the evils of Sabbath occupation. It is said by some that we are a godless age; and by others that we are a most enlightened and religious generation; and somehow or other both these classes coalesce to crush the poor labourer and shorten his life by robbing him of his Sunday. The godless people beg us not to be so fanatical as to make any law on any subject on which Jehovah has legislated; and the enlightened and hyper-religious entreat us not to sanction any statute respecting the right of the labourer to rest from toil on the seventh day, because it is a religious question!! You may make a “_Ten Hours Bill_” because it is not mentioned in the Bible; you may even enact a law against murder and theft, although both are mentioned in the Word of God; but alas! alas! to make a law to save the poor tired, worn out, weary, oppressed operative or clerk from being injured by Sabbath labour, would be to un-Protestant yourself and prove that you do not understand religious liberty!! As if religious liberty consisted in the liberty to kill our brethren and sisters by continuous labour!! If there had been no Fourth Commandment, given by God himself, we should have heard nothing about this matter. There was no Fourth Command about the “_Ten Hours Bill_” and therefore it passed; but now our poor operatives and peasants are to be robbed of their rights and burdened with over work, because their heavenly Father has said, “Remember the rest-day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt do no manner of work,” &c. Therefore, as Jehovah has said we shall do “no manner of work,” you, my Lord, propose that a royal charter shall be given to railway directors to enable them to exact labour from their servants on the “Lord’s-day.” Who can after this doubt our piety, our enlightenment, our staunch Protestantism, or our love to religious liberty?

These are some of the blessings which we are told belong to Christian freedom, and the Gospel dispensation! If our overworked mechanics, operatives, and labourers lived under the darkness and bondage of the Mosaic law, then, poor souls! they might have a good week’s wages for _six_ days’ work, and have one day in seven to rest, recruit their strength, enjoy their homes, bless their families, and improve their minds and morals; but seeing they live in an age of Gospel light, they are to be blessed with _seven_ days’ hard work, no rest from toil, no leisure day to taste the sweetness of home and train themselves and their families for this world and that to come! It will require no common sophistry to persuade the simple minds of the masses that it is an overwhelming privilege, to work _seven_ days instead of _six_, and often without any increase of wages! Many of them will wish they were Jews, and that the law of Moses was still in force, that they might rest one day in seven, and enjoy the sweets of home and the blessings of religious worship and instruction.

Then how absurd to suppose that we must not legislate concerning the Sabbath, because Jehovah has legislated on it! And yet we legislate on murder, theft, &c., although both these crimes are forbidden in the decalogue. Is this because there are no Sydenham speculators in the way of observing these commands? But if we legislate concerning the right of the labourer to rest on the Sabbath, we shall prevent certain gentlemen from robbing the poor to enrich themselves, and from shortening the lives of one body of citizens to increase the profits of another. Of course it would be vastly inconvenient to give every one license to rob, steal, and take away life; but forsooth, the case is much changed when, instead of licensing all to plunder and destroy, you make a monopoly of the business, and grant to Crystal Palace adventurers the privilege of defrauding their servants of one day in seven, of corrupting the morals of their fellow citizens, and shortening their days by oppressive toil. There is a tribunal before which Lords and Commons, employers and employed must appear, and before which a director has lately been suddenly summoned. There, my Lord, the highwayman who robbed with the pistol, and the noble or squire who more genteelly, with an Act of Parliament, or royal charter, plundered the labourer of one day in seven, will be placed in the same company and indicted for the same offence; and where also those who destroyed their brethren more speedily by prussic acid; and those who did it more slowly, but not less cruelly, by hard and continuous labour, will be ranked with Cain and his fraternity. Nor will it be any mitigation of their crime to plead that they would have granted “A SEVENTH DAY BILL” as well as “A TEN HOURS BILL,” if it had not been that the Bible forbad Sabbath labour. But as the Universal Father out of pure love to his children commanded that labour should not be exacted on the seventh day, therefore it behoved human legislators to countenance Sunday occupations, lest by following the dictates of heaven, of justice and humanity, they should violate the principles of religious liberty!!!

How many persons will be employed every Sabbath on the Sydenham Railway and in the gardens we cannot tell, nor need we trouble to inquire, because it is too much to sacrifice the liberties, rights, health and life of but ONE INDIVIDUAL. Were the French, the Russians, or the Turks wantonly to kill but _one_ Englishman, we should demand satisfaction. And shall we allow ourselves to plunder and destroy our poor brethren because we hope to enrich a few speculators thereby? Granted that the pleasure of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand may be obtained by such cruelty, yet the amusement and recreation of millions is but as the small dust of the balance when weighed against the rights and the life of but ONE labourer or operative. But, my Lord, the mischief will not be confined to _one_, or _two_. We are told that the working of the Sunday train from Edinburgh to Glasgow compels at least one hundred persons to break the Sabbath. Probably quite as many will be required for the Sydenham business; and therefore the sacrifice of human comfort, rights, health and life will be very great.

And it must be remembered that but few of the men and women employed will have time to enter a place of worship on the former part of the Lord’s-day. Granted that the visitors to the grounds may very devoutly go to church and pay their devotions to the Eternal before they hasten to break his Sabbath!! yet firemen, porters, waiters, &c., will hardly have time to repair to the sanctuary before they put the engines, &c., in readiness for their masters’ customers; so that the majority of these railway servants will be deprived of the opportunity of worshipping God and learning their duty. Here then, my Lord, will be robbery and cruelty of the worst kind, and therefore we call on you as a man to interfere between the oppressor and the oppressed. If you never went to church, and prayed that God would have mercy upon you and “incline your heart to keep the Fourth Commandment”; if you disbelieved revelation altogether; if you were a Jew, Turk, infidel, or the most ultra dissenter, yet then we would appeal to your humanity and entreat you to interpose the shield of the law and protect the servants of the Sydenham directors, and indeed all labourers, from being robbed and destroyed by Sabbath occupations.

The question then, my Lord, is a _physical_ one, and just as much within the range of parliamentary prohibition as any other which involves the property and lives of Her Majesty’s subjects. There is not a law in the statute book more just or humane than the enactments against Sabbath labour. The poor man has as equitable a claim to rest for twenty-four hours, every seventh day, as he has to sleep, to food, or protection from the thief and the assassin. Sunday is his own property, and no other day can now be substituted in its place. His physical frame demands it, and must be injured if deprived of its refreshing repose; and his family and home must be rendered desolate if robbed of the presence and smile of its husband, father, instructor and companion. We pity the orphan and the widow, but Sunday labour deprives the mother and her children of their best friend for months and years in succession. It is true he may come home every night, but then it is generally when his little ones are in bed, and he leaves in the morning before they are up; and should he visit his house during the day, in many cases they are at work, or at school. You cannot, my Lord, give another day that will be a compensation for the loss of the Sunday. Should our railway directors resolve to grant their servants a day every week as a substitute for the Sabbath, still the exchange would not be an equivalent. On the Sunday the whole family rests from labour; all the members are at home; the house is nicely cleaned; wife and children are dressed in their best, and all their resources of domestic happiness are at hand. These blessings cannot be had on the Monday, Tuesday, or any other day of the week. On the Sabbath the labourer is as free from toil and care as the nobleman, the prince, or the monarch; and this weekly leisure and independence are enjoyed by all his family. The whole community also has an opportunity of participating in these comforts, so that the people sympathize with each other in their rest from work, and the endearments of home which are thus elicited and cherished. Very great also are the intellectual, moral, and religious privileges of the Sabbath. But these physical, social and spiritual advantages and pleasures cannot be shared on any other day. All sorts of occupations will call the various members of the family from home; instead of the neat and quiet Sabbath appearance of the house, wife, children, neighbours and friends, all will be bustle and confusion, and everything will wear the aspect of business, labour and toil. No one will sympathize with the week-day rest of the railway operative. His wife is in her every day garb, and perhaps obliged to leave home to follow her calling. Did he rest on the ordinary Sabbath, he would enjoy it along with others; but by the unjust arrangement which makes his Sunday a week-day, and his week-day a Sunday, he has to work when others are free from toil; and when he has a period of repose, others are at work; and the noise and labour with which he is surrounded prevent him from having that rest and social enjoyment which he might share with his friends and relatives on the general Sabbath. And then most of the sanctuaries are closed, and thus he is as much shut up from the means of salvation as if he were transported to some heathen land.

You are therefore, my Lord, about to inflict incalculable evils and injuries upon a large portion of the most valuable of your fellow citizens. The working classes are very important members of the commonwealth. We cannot all be kings and queens; and trade, commerce, agriculture, manufactures, railways and domestic life, would be in a very pitiable condition if all were lords, squires, great capitalists, and Crystal Palace speculators. Our clerks, operatives, peasants, hard handed fustain jackets, smock frocks, &c., make the wealth and the comforts of the nation.

“Princes and peers may flourish or may fade—
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
If once destroyed, can never be supplied.”

Thanks to our Sabbaths, Sabbath Schools, Bibles, and Gospel Ministry, we have in this favoured land of ours, the most industrious, upright, contented, and moral population under heaven. It may suit speculators in State Education to malign the working classes, and to exaggerate the ignorance and vice that may exist among us, but still after making every just allowance for our intellectual and moral defects, we are prepared to prove, that there is no country on the globe which can boast of a race of operatives and peasants equal to the English. And are these the men and women who are to be robbed of their Sabbaths and the comforts of home? Is this the return which lords and gentlemen are about to make for their large revenues and peaceful mansions? It is no use, my Lord, to say that you only propose to injure, corrupt, and destroy a few, for the benefit of the many, because the country may have all necessary amusement without Sabbath desecration and without inflicting an evil on anyone; but if it could not, you have no right to rob even ONE man of his day of rest, his health and his home, to increase the wealth or minister to the recreation of others; and therefore, instead of sanctioning this injustice, it is the solemn duty of the Government to enact such laws as shall secure to the labourer full exemption from toil on every seventh day. Works of absolute necessity and deeds of charity and mercy may be attended to. All _requisite_ domestic duties may be performed: the sick and the young may be nursed: the ox and the ass may be led away to watering: or if either fall into a pit, it may be helped out; but then these occupations and occurrences will interfere very little with the rest of the Sabbath, and therefore can bear no comparison with continuous employment on that sacred day during the whole year.

Should your Lordship, or any of my readers, be doubtful respecting the physical evils arising from Sabbath labour, I may again refer to the Blue Book, containing the Parliamentary Evidence respecting Sabbath occupations. The testimony of the medical men and especially of Dr. Farr on this point is particularly worthy of notice. I may also quote the following words of another well known London Physician of long experience and great practice. The venerable Dr. Conquest of Finsbury Square, in a letter to the churchwardens of St. Luke’s, says,

“I regret my inability to be at the vestry this evening. Had it been
in my power to be there, I should have endeavoured to prove, as _a
medical man_, that it is _absolutely necessary_ for the _human
constitution_ to have _one day in seven for rest_, because _without
it_, its _powers_ become _enfeebled_ and _impaired_.—_Daily exertion_
and _excitement_ and _fatigue_ during the week, without this one
day’s rest, _prematurely break down_ the _strength_ and _vigour_ of
the _animal system_, _shorten life_, and _deprive old age_ of that
_energy_ and _cheerfulness_ which usually attend it in _those who
have rested from mental and bodily toil on the Lord’s-day_.”

There is not a physiologist or medical man in the country who understands the physical and metaphysical nature of man, but would subscribe to these sentiments. Here then you are shown that health, corporeal, mental and moral energy, and longevity, depend upon the rest of the Sabbath, and consequently that disease and premature death will arise from Sunday labour, and yet we are told that we must not legislate on this subject because it is a religious question. We grant that it is a religious question, but then it is a physical and social question also. Are not legislative enactments on murder, theft, on the cholera, factory labour and poisons, physical and religious questions at the same time? Yea, are they not religious because they are physical? Is it not a social, a physical, and a religious duty to preserve life and protect the rights of the labourer from the injustice of the oppressor? No one has a greater dread of over legislation, or legislation where conscience is concerned, than the writer of this Letter, but then who would say that legislating against murder and robbery must be shunned out of deference to the consciences of murderers and thieves; or because the duty to avoid these crimes is a religious duty; and therefore in making any laws respecting them we should violate the great principles of Religious Liberty, as though it was a part of Religious Liberty to grant to all sorts of assassins, plunderers, and speculators, the liberty to defraud and slay their brethren and dependents? Dr. Conquest, Dr. Farr, and many other skilful and experienced physiologists have proved, and are prepared to prove, that Sabbath labour shortens life, and this fact alone renders legislation on the subject the solemn duty of every humane government, whether that government consists of pagans, Jews, Turks, infidels, or Christians.

The remarks given above from Dr. Conquest have been borne out by all history and observation. Some years ago, Mr. Wilberforce endeavoured to persuade certain lawyers and barristers that Sunday occupations and consultations would shorten their days. They laughed at his fanaticism, sneered at him as a “_Saint_,” and were quite ready to “_Charivari_” him; but all these mockers died before their time. Some of them became melancholy imbeciles, and more than one committed suicide. We cannot, my Lord, violate the laws of God, whether written on the digestive organs, muscles and brain, or in the Bible, without having to pay the dire penalty of rebellion against the benevolent regulations of our heavenly Father.

We have heard a great deal of late concerning the Anglo-Saxon race, and its native vigour, enterprise, intelligence, &c. All our greatness has been attributed to physical causes, and these causes have been supposed to originate in the purity of our race. But the argument is absurd, because we are the most mixed and mongrel people under heaven. We have all sorts of blood in our veins. We are a compound of Ancient Britons, Romans, Scots, Irish, Saxons, Danes, Normans, French, Germans, Phenicians, &c., &c. And yet we boast of being Anglo-Saxons!! There is more scepticism than science in this vaunting. Men are unwilling to do homage to Christianity, and “to render to God the things that are God’s.” We owe all to the Bible and the Sabbath. The former, by circulating sound principles among us, has given us vigorous minds, and the latter by the repose of one day in seven, has imparted to us healthy physical constitutions. The rest from toil and worldly anxiety; the soothing associations of leisure, home, moral principle, and religious hope, have wrought wonders on our muscles, nerves, brain, and digestive organs, and thus have given us vigorous bodies; intrepid, enterprising, and persevering minds; moral courage; and honourable, humane, and philanthropic sentiments. What made the sturdy men of the Reformation and of the Commonwealth, but the Bible and the Sabbath? And if Anglo-Saxon must be a synonym for physical vigour and moral courage, then history, science, philosophy, and religion allow us to say, that the Bible and the Sabbath would make Anglo-Saxons of the Celts, the French, the Germans, the Chinese, and of all the world. Our venerable ancestors, both Episcopalians and Puritans, who built up the British constitution and rendered it the wonder, the glory, and terror of the world, saw that man must have a day of rest, and therefore made it a statute of the realm that labour should cease on the Lord’s-day; and we owe our national preeminence to their wisdom and piety. You ought therefore, my Lord, to hesitate before you remove those “ancient landmarks which your fathers set up”; for you may rest assured that as soon as you break up the good old Sabbath observance habits of our forefathers, and introduce, in its stead, Sunday labour and dissipation, you will hear no more of the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon race; for with a continental Sabbath you will have continental frivolity, effeminacy, fickleness, and revolutions; and it may be well for your Lordship to consider whether under such a change the nobility of England will share better than the clergy, the gentry, the nobles and princes of France under the reign of terror. The Bible and the Sabbath, if duly studied and observed, would have saved that country from all the melancholy and frightful calamities which it has had to suffer during the last sixty or seventy years.

Everyone, my Lord, who advocates Sunday labour, is not only an enemy to the working man, but an adversary to the country at large. It is impossible for such a man to be a patriot, because he endeavours to undermine the physical and moral vigour of the empire. It is no use to say, that in opening the Crystal Palace on the Sabbath, you advocate the amusement and not the labour of the masses; because you are going to doom one body of your countrymen to toil that they may enrich and please others. And depend upon it, when it is generally understood that railway directors can have _seven days’ labour_ for fifteen or twenty shillings a week, other masters will exact the same hard terms from their workpeople. They will naturally ask, Who are we that we should pay as much for _six days_, as the railway lords do for _seven_? The certain result to the working classes will be increased labour and diminished wages; and thus under this pretence of giving Sunday recreation to operatives and others, one of the most deadly injuries will be inflicted upon them. They have often been duped by designing demagogues, but now it seems Conservative Lords and Radical Dissenters are to be their deceivers. Of old Herod and Pontius Pilate were made friends when the Son of God was to be crucified; and in our time, we have lords and plebeians, Conservatives, Whigs, Radicals, Chartists, Atheists, debauchees, Episcopalians and ultra-Dissenters—all leagued together to rob the poor brethren of Jesus Christ, of their day of rest, and the ten thousand blessings connected therewith. We congratulate you, my Lord, on your companions, coadjutors, and fellow labourers: though we know that you must not hope much from the certain result of your zeal. It is often said that our Norman nobility have never naturalized themselves in this foreign land, and the present effort to destroy the physical and moral greatness of the nation by Sunday labour will go far to prove that they have not as yet become English patriots. Sabbath amusement for one class will be Sabbath slavery to another; and as this Sabbath labour and desecration increases, the nation will fall and will most certainly involve the nobility in its ruin.

Much is said of recreation and comfort for the working classes, but we must be just before we are generous, and not forget the rights and happiness of those who are to be worked. I have before said that England owes much to its domestic circles and its homes. “Home! sweet Home!” is an air which charms everyone among us; but do away with the Sabbath, and you destroy the English home. “Mother,” said a child, “you seem so happy always on a Sunday, I wish it were Sunday every day.” “You are always better on a Sunday when father’s at home,” said a little girl to her sick mother. Another said, “Oh, we are so uncomfortable to-day, it don’t seem like Sunday, because father has been at work all day, and has not cleaned himself.” “Don’t the sun always shine brighter on the Sunday? and it is never such nasty wet rain on a Sunday as on other days,” exclaimed another group of children. But the sick wife of the railway servant, and the fond children, are to know nothing of these Sabbath endearments. Sunday suns and Sunday rains will be week day suns and rains to them, and this will continue from year’s end to year’s end. Really, my Lord, as a religious individual, and consequently a very feeling, sympathetic, and humane man, you ought to hesitate before you resolve to destroy domestic ties and affections to which your country owes so much of its happiness, prosperity, and greatness. Your good Lady, the Duchess of Sutherland, and others, are calling loudly upon the Americans to pity the poor negro, and we beg your Lordship to have some compassion for these intended Crystal Palace slaves, and not allow their homes to be broken up and their wives to be as widows and their children orphans.

The idea, my Lord, that large numbers of the masses will run down to the Crystal Palace _every_ Sunday is an idle fancy. What will it cost for a man to take his wife and children to Sydenham? In many instances from six to ten shillings will be needed! Will Mr. Mayhew’s Spitalfields weavers be able to spare this sum? How many times a year will they go? How many of them will go? For unless they go very often, we are afraid that their moral improvement will not be very great; and, during the Sabbaths that the people stay at home, there will be no very great diminution of the crowds that occupy the filthy lanes and alleys of London. Will enough on any one Sunday leave their houses to cause any visible decrease of the inhabitants? Will whole families go? or will there not be a separation of its members—some gone to the Crystal Palace, and coming home drunk or ruined, while the poor wife and other portions of the household will be left in solitude at home? One would suppose, to hear some people talk, that as soon as Sydenham is opened, all the miserable wretches in London, all the ragged half starved creatures, and especially all the poor operatives in Spitalfields, will, by some magic or miracle, be well clothed, have plenty of cash in their pockets, and after going to church very devoutly one half of the Sabbath, hurry away in full glee to the Crystal Palace on the other, and thus their future Sundays all through the year will be passed between the celestial paradise of the temple and the earthly Elysium at Sydenham!! No one after this will laugh, if a new body of speculators should arise and propose to take these said paupers and operatives to visit the moon and all the planets every Lord’s-day. And thus, my Lord, for an imagined good, which it would be the most arrant folly to anticipate, you are about to sacrifice the home comforts, the health, the morals, and the lives of a large number of the most valuable of your countrymen. The same principle that led you to legislate respecting cruelty to animals, and to the men, women, and children in factories and mines, calls upon you to interpose the authority of the law, and say to the Sydenham gentlemen, “There shall be no labour on the Sabbath.”

We are told that if the men hire themselves out to this drudgery it will be a _voluntary_ act of their own. Granted, my Lord; but still when a husband and father, who has a wife and family crying for bread, is told that he may have employment if he will break the Sabbath, but that famine shall be the result of his resting on the Lord’s-day, there is great danger that many will prefer transgression to poverty and want. All persecutors are perfect voluntaries. It was quite optional for Stephen to be stoned; for the disciples to be imprisoned; for Huss, Latimer, and Hooper to be burnt; for the pilgrim fathers to emigrate to America; and for the Madiai to go to gaol. Persecutors are among the fairest people under heaven. They generally set comfort and torture, life and death, before their victims, and give them a perfect choice of either. Formerly burning was fashionable; but now starvation is nearly all the rage. We do not burn people in this enlightened day. We are too refined, for we live in the nineteenth century, to be sure. No persecution now, forsooth, we are too humane for that. We only say to the famishing operative or peasant, “You must go to church, or starve!” “you must go to chapel, or starve!” “you must spend your Sabbaths on Sydenham Railway, or starve!” Now I really think, my Lord, if you had your choice, notwithstanding all our boasting of religious liberty and charity, that you would as soon be burnt by Bonner as starved to death, wife, family and all, by these more refined modern persecutors. For say what you will, Sunday labour is not only inhuman and cruel, but it is persecution, and ought to be as much restrained by the hand of the law as any other oppression which would prevent men from worshipping God. I knew one of the best of men in London leave his fatherland and become an emigrant because of the Sunday labour at the Post Office, and thus the government lost a good servant by this persecution. And we shall soon have on a large scale a new race of pilgrim fathers, who will seek refuge in a foreign land that they may enjoy the Sabbath which they are refused in their own Christian country. To turn a man off from work because he fears God and keeps the Sabbath is persecution. The civil government is as much bound to protect the day for worship as the temple in which the man worships.

Again we repeat, we desire no interference with the religious opinions of anyone. Let men spend their Sabbath as they please, provided they do not compel others to any unnecessary work. The laws respecting murder, theft, cruelty to animals, prisons, nuisances, factory labour, do not interfere with the religion of Catholic, Protestant, Episcopalian, or Dissenter. They merely protect the health, the bodies and rights of the people, and on these principles we call on the legislature in the name of humanity, of justice, of health, life, right, and freedom, to prohibit Sabbath labour.

Drowning men catch at straws, and you are in danger, my Lord, of being seduced by certain individuals who call themselves liberal dissenters, and profess to expound the sentiments of their brethren. They will tell you that you must not legislate to prevent the poor man from being robbed and killed by Sunday labour, because it is a religious question!! But you must beware of these gentlemen. They have not the confidence of their brethren, nor do they represent their views. Their sentiments are as outrageous as they are ultra. To say that Dissent allows the working man to be robbed and slain by oppressive masters; to be starved to death, or persecuted into exile, is one of the foulest libels that has ever been uttered. These men have not yet learnt the duties of civil legislation. They have not distinguished between physical and religious—between bodily and spiritual matters; they have not learnt that in some points human and divine legislation must go hand in hand; nor have they ascertained where the one is to stop or where the two are to diverge. A man who holds with a “Ten Hours Bill,” with laws to prevent cruelty to women, children, and animals; with statutes to prevent murder, theft, and swindling, and yet protests that you must not protect the bodies of men from Sabbath labour, is a novice in humanity, and has yet to learn his political alphabet. Sabbath labour is inhuman; Sabbath labour is robbery; Sabbath labour is cruelty; Sabbath labour is persecution; Sabbath labour is deadly; and therefore ought to be restrained by the authority of the law.

Some of them become very religious and tell you that every day, under the Christian dispensation, is to be a Sabbath; but they do not mean what they say. Sabbath, my Lord, signifies REST from labour; and if every day is to be a Sabbath, then we must rest from labour everyday, and never do any work at all! Jehovah has said, “six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do, but the seventh is the DAY OF REST.” Rest from labour is one of the _essential_ ideas included in the word Sabbath; and these pious people say that every day is to be a _Sabbath_, and therefore a day of _rest_ from toil; for where there is no cessation from labour, there is no _Sabbath_ in the scriptural meaning of the term. But so perverted are these reasoners, that they tell us though Sabbath means rest from labour, yet people are now at perfect liberty to work all the day, and Sydenham adventurers ought therefore to be allowed to rob, demoralize, and kill a portion of the population by Sunday toil!! The reasoning of these gentlemen is as logical as their legislation is liberal and humane.

“Ah, but” they say, “The Sabbath is abolished!” But where, my Lord, is the repeal mentioned? “Oh,” they gravely reply, “The Sabbath was made for man.” That is, it was benevolently instituted for the rest of his physical frame and the edification of his soul. _Ergo_, it is abolished!! Glorious reasoning, my Lord! But still they argue, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” _Ergo_, the Sabbath is abrogated, and he is the Lord of a nonentity!!

“No _man_ is to judge us in respect of new moons and Sabbaths.” ERGO, the _Lord_ is not to judge us, although he has given us the ten commandments, and told us that they are not abolished, and that the law is not in any point made void by faith.

“The day is changed from the seventh to the first. _Ergo_, it is abolished!!” _Change_ and _abolition_ synonyms!! The Apostles for a while observed the seventh day that they might preach to the Jews, and the _first_ day that they might assemble as Christians, and at length, in obedience to their Lord’s will, these _inspired_ men dropped the seventh and kept the first alone, but retained the spirit of the law by assembling _every seventh_ day, and therefore, to be sure, broke up the Sabbath altogether!! Whether these are “_sequiturs_” or “_non sequiturs_,” I leave your Lordship to judge.

But then we are so spiritual in these Gospel days, that we do not need a Sabbath. ERGO, we show our spirituality by _secularizing_ the Sabbath!! Of course we are more spiritual than the Creator who consecrated one day in seven; more spiritual than Adam in innocency; than Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, the Prophets, our Lord, or the Apostles; and therefore we can do without such vulgar things as Sabbaths or religious instruction. Doubtless the Gospel has given us iron nerves and muscles to labour incessantly; and now forsooth we are all born with instinctive morality, theology, and devotion, and can do without such old fashioned, obsolete lumber as religious edification! And yet, my Lord, we who thus boast are the most Mammon worshipping, worldly minded people under heaven. We are so spiritually minded that we wish the labourer to work _seven_ days instead of _six_; that we open the Crystal Palace on Sundays for the sole purpose of getting money out of the pockets of the people! We are so spiritual that almost everything we do is contaminated with selfishness! We are so evangelical and heavenly that we are robbing and killing our fellow creatures by Sunday labour, and are agitating to increase these hecatombs of human victims offered to avarice. “The Song of the Shirt” is no exaggeration, and therefore what a spiritual and benevolent people we must be! What wicked fellows those infidels are who doubt the divine origin of this cruel caricature of Christianity which we give them in our deeds, and how depraved they must be to say to such spiritually minded souls, “What do ye more than others?” What a blessed proof of heavenly mindedness, that we can rob men of their Sabbath and lives, and then thank God that we are not as other men are!

“But the early Christians did not legislate concerning the Sabbath,” say your new friends. But then you know, my Lord, that they did not ask the government to make any laws against murder or theft; they did not agitate against slavery; for the franchise; for corn-laws, or their repeal; for the Union, or “The Separation of the Church and State,” &c. &c.; and if we imitate them, we shall give up civil legislation altogether. What Paul would have done, if he had been a Member of Parliament, we can hardly say; still, we may safely affirm that he would as soon have voted to keep men from being robbed, persecuted, and killed by Sabbath labour, as he would for a bill to prevent cruelty to men, women, children, or animals, and would hardly have dreamt that in so doing he was violating the great principles of religious liberty.

Another favourite argument which some use and urge, they tell us, “with tears in their eyes,” is that you will draw people from the gin palaces. That is, my Lord, you are “to do evil that good may come.” You have committed ONE great crime by licensing men to poison, corrupt, and destroy the population by strong drink; and now you are to give a royal charter for a second crime, that you may counteract the first! This is adding sin to sin. Why not shut up all public houses on the Sabbath? It is as much our duty to do so as to legislate concerning the sale of stinking fish, or to prevent any nuisance which endangers the health and rights of the people. And then do you think, my Lord, that these gin palace visitors will go every Sunday to Sydenham? Some of them now idle away one, two, or three days a week in pothouses, and spend money enough to pay for sight seeing and a railway excursion every week. Will Sabbath breaking and the Crystal Palace convert them into pious men and women? “Credat Judæus.”

There are at present in London several parks, which any of these persons may visit for nothing, and without enslaving any of their fellow citizens to minister to their amusement; and therefore it is perfectly superfluous to open the Sydenham Railway on the Sabbath. London, for its wide thoroughfares, fine buildings, and extensive walks, is one of the most healthy and splendid cities in the world; and is continually being made more and more so. Why then wish to license by royal charter a system of amusement which must be attended with Sabbath desecration and the slavery of the workmen employed in conducting it? Besides, if there are not walks enough, let others be made, that the masses may have all the resources of health at command without injury to the domestic comforts, rights, and liberties of any of their fellow citizens. We do not want to shut every man, woman, and child up on a Sabbath. All that we desire is, that Sunday labour shall be restrained by law; and we demand this on the same broad principle of justice that we ask for any regulation connected with the civil rights of the country.

It is a fact that numbers of those who now keep public houses, &c., would be glad to have a general law passed to close them on the Sabbath. At a public dinner of licensed victuallers and publicans in Manchester last October, one of the speakers, who had several houses and carried on a large trade, entreated his brethren to shut up on the Sabbath; and assured them that he always did so himself, and had been a great gainer in consequence of the improved character of his servants, which arose from their being allowed to rest on the Sabbath, and attend to their moral improvement. Our gin palaces might all be closed on the Lord’s-day, and then there would be no drunken population on the Sunday, and no need of a Sydenham claptrap to pretend to cure one crime by the committal of another.

Most of our pseudo philanthropists who are agitating for Sabbath recreations, are after all no real friends to the masses. They seem to take it for granted that operatives and labourers should never have any time for amusement but on a Sunday; and that nature intended them to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for twelve or fourteen hours during every week-day. But we protest against this cruel creed. Let taxes be lowered, national expenditure economised, sinecures abolished, peace and free trade with all countries be cultivated; let especially the taxes on knowledge be repealed, and the lords and squires show that they are patriots by giving up their pensions and refusing to receive such enormous salaries; let the wages of the labourer and mechanic be just and equitable, and let the nobility, clergy, gentry, and religious people do their duty by teaching and encouraging provident and moral habits; and then the working men and women of England will be able to enjoy week-day recreation much more frequently than they would go to the Crystal Palace on a Sunday: and thus they will be saved the moral deterioration which must invariably attend on Sabbath desecration, and will have no need to enslave any of their brethren to minister to their happiness.

It is said we are losing hold of the masses. But, my Lord, this is a great delusion. The fact is we have never as yet laid hold of them as a body; and we have not done so, because we have never used the proper means. And yet, bad as things are, I never walked through any of the worst haunts of London without being assured by persons of age and experience, that things are not half so bad as they were twenty or thirty years ago. And the improvement is going on. There are more churches, chapels, and schools than were in existence in former years, and more persons attending them; there never was in the whole history of the country so many of the masses found in the house of God, or under a course of religious instruction; and the only thing that can prevent this reformation from going on, is Sabbath labour and the opening such places as the Crystal Palace on the Lord’s-day. I have, Sabbath after Sabbath, preached in Sion Chapel, Whitechapel, to between three and four thousand persons, most of them operatives from Spitalfields and the neighbourhood, and yet within a stone’s throw the Rev. Mr. Champneys had Whitechapel Church thronged; and just at hand other churches and chapels were well filled. It is untrue to talk of our losing hold of the masses; they never attended on the house of God in such numbers as now, nor were they ever in so favourable a condition to be won by Christian exertion. Infidelity, trades unions, socialism, halls of sciences, dissipation, thieving, &c., &c., have all failed, and they are now literally waiting to be gathered to the fold of Christ. But if they were not, the man who would suppose, that opening a Crystal Palace on Sundays would supply these poor souls with funds to go there, and would catch them all and make them first-water citizens and Christians, must be a wilder enthusiast than has ever yet entered the walls of Bedlam or St. Luke’s. My Lord, there never was a greater hoax than this Sydenham speculation; and the arguments used in its favour, show us what sanctimonious fanatics some men will stoop to be if gain can be won by pretended philanthropy and godliness.

But it is added, that we are to use _moral_ means to win the masses; and we reply that we propose to employ no other. We view the Sabbath in its two aspects as a civil and a religious institution—as a physical and a spiritual boon to mankind; and we do not wish that the legislature should enact one law respecting the religious observance of the day; we only ask the Government to fulfil its political duty by securing to the labourer that exemption from toil which would injure his health, and of which wicked men would rob him if the civil power did not interfere. We are not so foolish as to suppose that mere rest from labour is religion or holiness to the Lord; but we do believe that the rest is necessary for instruction in holiness; and therefore we say to the State, You do your duty and protect the labourer from toil, and then let the Church use all proper moral means to influence him to spend his Sabbath in such a manner as shall conduce to his intellectual, moral, and eternal welfare. But our ultra liberals, after becoming quite angry and calling us a number of ugly names, exclaim, “We depend on the omnipotence of moral means”; and then turn around to a host of sharpers and say, “You may depend upon our utmost aid in enabling you to keep these poor fellows from ever having the least chance of coming within the reach of these moral means! Work the slaves as much as you like, work them seven days a week, we will see that no legislative enactment shall secure them from being slain by labour, or give them leisure to come to the house of God”! How infidels, atheists, the speculators in the nerves and muscles of their fellow man, and all who view the operative as a mere beast of burden, exult as they thus behold religious liberty voluntarily stooping to minister at the altar of Mammon, and victimize the working classes; boasting of moral force, and labouring hard to put the people beyond the reach of its power!