The Sun.
London, England, 1855-07-05 00:00:00

SUNDAY TRADING BILL.

The Sunday Trading Bill, after spoiling two Sundays
in Hyde-park, has been judiciously withdrawn by its
author. Whether it would ever have been carried, even
if it had met with no such pressure from without, is more
than we can say, for it passes any ordinary understand-
ing to guess what bills of this sort will pass and what
will not. It might be imagined that the Legislature
would be particularly cautious of attempting to force on
the labouring classes a more rigorous observance of the
Sunday than they practise themselves. Or, at all events,
it might be presumed that they had laid down some ,
very clear rules for their guidance on the subject.
But the fact is otherwise. You may take a bill into
either House, prescribing what a man may or may not
do any hour of the Sunday, and it may slip through as
easily as not. A very little resistance indeed might have
sufficed to defeat Lord Robert Grosvenor's measure, but
in these religious days few people would be found ambi-
tious to be known all over England and renowned for
ages to come in Exeter-hall as having defeated a bill for
the better observance of the Sabbath. The invariable
presumption is, that if a man objects to a legislative
and compulsory observance of the Sabbath he is in-
different to its observance altogether. That conclu-
sion may be illogical and ,unfounded, but men shrink
from it. Timis, with the probability of few members
having the courage to vote against a Sunday bill, and the
chapter of accidents in his favour, Lord R. Grosvenor's
bill might have drifted through in the current of July
legislation, and the working of the measure would only
have been known to the public by a series of rows be-
tween the police and the small shopkeepers the next 'swill-
ing Sunday. As it is, he has listened to the arguments
which the mob inHyde-park were not allowed to hear last
Sunday and the Sunday before, and has left Sunday trad-
ing to the good sense and religious feelings of the people.
Hence the semblance at least of a popular triumph
gained over Parliament, the police, and the authorities
of Hyde Park.
But it is the misfortune of popular agitators that they
never know when or where to etore when they have
once made the discovery, or fancied they have made it,
that a little mobbing, and hooting, and cheering will
throw out any bill, and even compel Parliament to re-
trace its steps. Such an opinion, it is needless to say, is
wholly at variance with all government. It is what is
called mob-law, and no country is worth living in where it
prevails. It is stated, on that species of authority which
not only announces measures, but even helps to carry
them out, that next Sunday the fustian-jackets, who
dared the wrath of the pelice last Sunday in Hyde-park,
intend a demonstration of another kind in the region of
Club-land. Now, a mob of a hundred thousand persons
in Hyde park is no very agreeable incident ; but in Palls
mall, and with the aggravation that it could only intend
the repeal of a law already passed and in full operation,
it would be a monstrous evil. The British populace,
which usually appreciates the appeal to its good sense,
must see there is the greatest difference between an as-
semblage in a space of near a thousand acres and one in
narrow streets, and a demonstration against a bill in
Parliament and one against the existing laws of the
country. Every one will ask, " What next ?" The
question has often been asked with regard to the move-
ment of last Sunday, and if the populace were to answer
the question by a riot in the streets, ending, as all riots
must do, in bloodshed, broken windows, or worse con-
sequences, they would damage all their friends and pre-
sent a victory to their enemies.
It is very strange that the working classes, with all
their spirit, and the very strong case they have for them-
selves, don't get a proper way of stating that case, and
stating it in time. Instead of tbat,theypour in their argu-
ments, just as our Government poured in its supplies at
Balaklava, half a year too late. There is evidently as great
a want of administrative reform, and every other reform, in
Lambeth and Spitalfields as in Do wning-street. Somehow
or other, the small householders, and small shopkeepers,
and small publicans, and all the small people, who seem
to have it very much their own way in the return of
members for Parliament, either don't make the best
choice, or fail to prime their representatives as they
ought to do. Surely, with we forget how many metro-
politan members, the Sunday Trading Bill ought to have
been safe of rejection, and the Public-house Bill of last
session might have been rather less vexatious. The re-
sult only agrees too well with that estimation in which
metroplitaas members unfortunately stand, as a set of
men who promise much and do little, and, with all their
pretensions,' have really less substantive existence and
harmonious action than any other section of the Legis-
lature. It certainly is a very poor compliment to repre-
sentative Government and popular institutions that a
people returning a score members to Parliament, all
living wituin an hour's walk of its walls, should find no
other way of expressing itself and acting with effect than
making a row in, the streets, to annoy a set of people
with 'whom it has no manner of quarrel, all in order to
obtain by these indirect means the repeal of a measure
passed a year ago. What's the use of household suffer-
age, and twenty M.P.'s, if it must, after all, come to a
street mob, both striking in the dark and a year-too late
for the purpose ?—Times.

CITY OP LONDON ELECTION.—The select committee
appointed to ascertain whether Baron Rothschild is dis-
qualified to sit for the City, on account of his being a
Government loan contractor, met yesterday to choose
their chairman and determine the course of proceeding.
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