The Express.
London, England, 1867-05-16 00:00:00

MR. Hl'GREs'g RUNDAT TRADING BILL.

The objection which first occurs to the Times
in considering the bill of Mr. Hughes, is that it deals with
the symptom and not with the disease. As to the pro-
tection it would give to tradesmen, there is often an
eagerness for gain, which is neither prudent nor creditable,
at the bottom of this appeal. If nine-tenths of the
tradesmen in a district were prepared to hold to a
prudent resolution, they would be very little in-
jured by the competition of the remaining tenth.
So long as the demand occasioned by the continuous em-
ployment of the week exists, any law on the subject of
Sunday trading will be more or less evaded. This bill will
obviously be very roughly handled in committee, and even
then the house will do well to be cautious before they
finally adopt it.
The Post hopes Mr. Hughes may succeed, as it does not
believe there is any necessity for permitting trading on
Sunday as at present openly carried on ; while the Herald
says the general expectation will be falsified if the bill
passes through all it■ stages in the House of Commons
without undergoing material alteration. It sets out, in
point of fact, with enacting a license for buying and
selling certain articles within certain hours, and thus
expressly recognises practices at present under the ban of
the law. The Herald looks to see these objectionable
clauses expunged before the measure receives the final
sanction of ptrliament. It need not task very hardly the
legal ingenuity of the learned member for Lambeth to
draw up a bill which may prevent Sunday trading
throughout the noon and afternoon of the day of rest
without legalising it in the early morning. But if such a
task shall ultimately be shown either to exceed the
powers or to disturb the equanimity of the gentlenisn who
has undertaken it, we fear the Howie of Commons will
have no option but to relegate this well-meant but ill-
devised scheme to that political Inferno which is paved
with so many similar legislative abortions.

CLERICAL

The Daily Neva suggests that Lord Shaftesbury, in
placing before churchmen the dangers with which the es-
tablishment is threatened, may have rendered a greater
service than if he had succeeded in his immediate design.
Either his speech was too large for the bill, or the bill was
too little for the speech. When you have shown that •
clergyman of the church of England is offering the mass
as ► sacrificer for quick and dead, it is • small thing—and,
if we might my it without offence, a mean thing—
to propose simply to take away his chasuble. The
debate shows the mischief to be apprehended from the
impunity which these practices have enjoyed. The
laity are acceding in large number, ; and • great
change is coming over bodies of dissenters like
the Wesleyans, who have hitherto declined to regard their
work as antagonistic to the church of England. In hun-
dreds of eases parishioners are compelled either to wit-
ness services which, if not illegal, are at any rate un-
known to the law, or absent themselves altogether; and
if some remedy is not found, • bitter feeling, such as we
have never yet known, will be awakened against the esta-
blishment. Liberty, at least, should be allowed to the
laity when driven from the edifices in which their fathers
worshipped before them, to constitute themselves, without
forfeiting the character of churchmen, into separate con-
gregations, and choose and support their own minister,
who will adhere to the doctrine of the Reformation. A
knowledge that they had such freedom would do more
than anything else to restrain the extreme clergy. This,
however, would only palliate the evil. A church cannot
be at once national and congregational, for the country
would not long be satisfied to seo the church of England
become • congeries of sects, held together by the bond of
material endowments.

The fact that 46 peers, including 11 bishops, expressed
by their votes their concurrence in Lord Shaftesbury's
measure, is commended by the Tines to the attention of
those clerical gentlemen who look to the Upper House in
case of an emergency. But Lord Shaftesbury's speech
only brought out in still more force the unfitness of par-
liament for the discussion and settlement of such ques-
tions. Public taste will not allow such a scandal to re-
ligion and manners as a series of wrangles in the House of
Commons, where there are not only many Roman catholic'
and dissenters, but perhaps quite as many who care for
none of these things. One enactment on these externals
of divine worship would, be certainly followed by further
ones, and parliament would either resign the task to other
hands or have to discus externals with a view to their
supposed spiritual significance. The plea for protection of
the laity is sound, but there is no reason why it may not
be as well urged before a commission as before par-
liament.

The Pod thinks it very doubtful if as yet this question
has been sufficiently investigated in a calm and impartial
manner to justify legislation without farther and more
careful inquiry. A bill brought in after the investigations
of a royal commission, and flamed on the conclusions
drawn from a careful and impartial consideration of the
whole of this important subject, would have far more
chance of being accepted as decisive, and of healing the
differences which are now bringing so math disunion into
the services of the church of England, than a bill intro-
duced by any private peer or member of parliament.
The Star has no faith in royal commissions cm this 'ab-
ject, or in the efficacy of acts of parliament. Until the
legislature concedes to the laity its proper position in the
government of the church ; until the parishioners of Eng-
land have a voice in the appointment of their elm
ministers and in the management of their own services,
the wrangling, of convocation, the hair splitting' of royal
commissions, and tho►c interminable disputatious of Lords

and Commons which are impendirg, will prove an unpro.
Arable wade of time and energy.