The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 3, 1853.

ers, carpenters, carvers and gilders, coachmakers
and fitters, coopers, engineers, boilermakers,
moulders, leather-workers, labourers, painters,
glaziers and colourmen, plasterers, plumbers,
pewterers, tin-plate workers and, type founders,
printers, rope makers and twine spinners,
sawyers, stone masons, shipwrights and ship-
joiners, shoemakers, silk and velvet workers,
smiths, tailors, tobacconists and cigarmakers,
farriers, glass and earthenwareworkers, gold and
silver workers and watchmakers, hatters, cutlers
and instrumentmakers. Altogether, no less
than 100,000 men spoke thus through their re-
presentatives. No wonder the Chairman, on opening
the proceedings, spoke of the meeting as one of no
ordinary character, adding that there were actually
then present a larger number of working men than
could be found in many of the German Princi-
palities. The precise object of the Meeting was, of
course, as had been intimated in the Advertisement
calling the trades' delegates together, to enable
the labouring classes of the capital to declare
themselves in favour of opening the Crystal
Palace on Sundays. In doing this, however, they
were not only demanding a particular boon, but
asserting a wide and comprehensive principle. In
reference to the Sabbath Desecration Cry thereby
protested against, it was remarked yesterday by one
of the speakers representing the silk-weavers of
Spitalfields, that "it was a curious circumstance
to think that it was no desecration to walk by the
side of the Serpentine in Hyde-park, while it ap-
peared that a walk by a fountain in the garden of the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham was desecration." An-
other of the delegates very truly remarked that it was
not charity they wanted in the matter, but only
justice. All that the working classes require, in
fact, is to be allowed to worship their Maker as
they please. They simply cry out, as against an
odious and intolerable injustice, against the attempt
to make punishable by law such acts as their strolling
among flower-beds, or sauntering over the green-
sward, or reposing under the shadow of the sum-
mer branches, or basking in the sunshine on the
brink of a fountain. They have permission to walk
whenever they like in the fields at Battersea—
they want equal freedom to go if they will on
Sundays as far as the fields at Sydenham.
Everybody knows that labour no less than hun-
ger imparts a relish to the homeliest nourish-
ment optimum obsonium labor—it is even an
adage that "labour is the best sauce." If
is to the homely food of Nature that the toiling
people desire liberty to go where they list upon
Sundays, with that, keen appetite for moral and
intellectual nourishment. They want merely, as
HENRY MAYHEW said last night, to claim their
right, as rational beings, to use their only day of
rest out of every seven in such a way as shall make
them better, wiser, and healthier. An honest
wish enough—and one, GOD knows, in no manner
opposed to the beneficent principles of Chris-
tianity.

The Foreign duties of the English Press have
recently been much discussed, and it is desirable
that they should be well inderstood, and gene-
rally recognised. On the whole, native good
sense had guided the majority of journals rightly
enough, and it is not our purpose to summon any,
whom we may consider delinquents to our bar ;
we merely wish to express our own general views
in common with others. So very much in this, as
well in all departments of literature, must be left to
the sound judgment and cultivated taste of the
individual, and the circumstances themselves
which call for discussion or comment are so
various, that unless the writer has a higher inter-
nal law than rules or precedents, he must both
commit himself, and, if of importance enough,
bring discredit on his profession. To warn a
journal, for instance, of the slightest pretensions
to character, that it ought not without satisfac-
tory evidence to , mit statements injurious to the
reputation of a Foreign Government or nation,
-would be to insult it ; it would mean in plain
words, "Be careful how you circulate lies." A
caution, we hope, needed by few English journals,
though, occasionally, a desirable eagerness to give
the earliest information may lead to the very
verge of this moral precipice. A dayor two
commonly suffices to justify the position, or
to step
.back becomingly. Beyond they simple
lino of truthfulness, however, almost everything
must be decided by a great number of considera-
tions, many of them conflicting, and many of them
of a rather delicate kind.
Remarking in English journals on the conduct
of Foreigners and their Rulers must be guided, in
great part, by the same views which should regu-
late the remarks of neighbours on other families
and their iheads. What it is our right and duty
to notice and censure in our own household, we
should shrink from making the subject of street
or parish talk and condemnation in the case of our
neighbour. We should expect to be informed it
was no business of ours, much less that of the
neighbourhood's ; and we should not look for the
continuance of friendly recognition. If we, then,
indulge the same freedom on many points with
our national neighbours as we do with our people
and Government, we must expect a resentful sense
of intermeddling. But, on the other hand, if our
neighbour flagrantly and openly violates the ac-
knowledged duties of domestic life, or if he becomes
in the eyes of all the oppressor of those he is
bound to protect, he has no right to com-
plain if the insulted social feelings of his neigh-
bourS find some appropriate vent. In the case,
however, of nations as of individuals, who is to
be judge of what demands such extra-judicial
chastisement ? We can only reply each one for
himself. The check of general civilised opinion
is as much needed by nations (and has been seen
even lately to have a very salutary effect), as the
check of social opinion is needed by individuals.
Both checks are sadly too much unheeded, yet
both society and the world would go on much
worse without them. The desirable, but difficult,
perhaps impossible, problem is to get rid of all
their attendant evils. While, however, we all in
our own opinion are so much wiser than foreigners,
and while they are as sensitive as we in their
place should be to the least appearance of assump-
tion, things never will run quite smooth.
On the one hand, the English Press is confes-
sedly the only Free Press in Europe. Here only
can any of the great social and political questions
which affect so deeply the welfare of millions be
freely discussed at all. Here only can the
wrongs of the down- trodden be recorded

before the world, and the martyr's groans
and cries be heard from beneath the altar. Eng-
land is not only the land of refuge for the pro-
scribed patriot,—it is the refuge for his principles
also. From the English IPress alone can they be
proclaimed, their wisdom or their folly discussed,
and an impartial verdict given. Nor can our
press evade its duty in this respect. Its writers
must share the sympathies of their people, and
the English people, lovers above all of liberty for
themselves, will sympathise with real patriots and
martyrs all the world over. They scarcely know
how to tolerate the necessary diplomatic pro-
prieties of our statesmen towards foreign despots
and bigots, and they would be utterly disgusted
with a press which followed merely the conven-
tional courtesies of their Government. Our
respectable writers are fully aware of their digni-
fied position. They repel, on the one hand, the
selfish and ambitious revolutionist, and do justice
to enlightened victims of relentless oppression,
and circumstances fresh in every one's recollection

show how lawless despots disrelish the English
press. No doubt one journal may condemn as
an enthusiast, or worse, the man whom another
lauds as a model of wise patriotism ; but
this, of course, is merely a question of diversity
of judgment—a diversity inevitable where jour-
nalism is really independent.
But if, on the one hand, the Free Press of Eng-
land is bound to plead the cause which is perse-
cuted or silenced elsewhere, and to denounce
marked injustice or wickedness everywhere, how
many modifying and limiting considerations are
there ? Our imperfect knowledge of foreign modes
of thought and feeling, and of the adaptedness of
what we prise at home to the wants of other na-

tions ; the amount of injury we may do by ill-
considered censures ; the way in which they may
be distorted and perverted by the few who can
read our language to the many who can not, and