The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-26 00:00:00

PUBLIC-HOUSES ACTIN SCOTLAND-THREAT-
ENED ASSAULT ON THE MORAL FREEDOM
OF T.FIE CITIZEN IN ENGLAND.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BUN.

SlR,—Some short time back, one Forbes Mackenzie
then in Parliament as one of the members for Liverpool,
but afterwards deprived of his seat on account of illegal
practices at the election—i. e., bribing the electors with
short drink—was successful in carrying throughthe House
of Commons a bill which, among other most oppressive
enactments, closed against the public all houses of enter-
tainment where beer or spirits are sold throughout the
whole of Sunday. That a person so insignificant was
able to effectuate such tyranny I should think surprised
everybody—and must have surprised himself. I now
notice that three members of the House of Commons,
designated as Mr. Wilson Patten, Mr. Henley, and Mr.
Sutheron, have introduced into the branch of the Legis-
lature of which they are members a bill of much the
same description, and that at the fag-end of the session.
Several measures of great importance, announced in the
speech of the Sovereign at the opening of Parliament,
as the plan for extending the franchise—a, measure of
transparent equity—have been abandoned or defeated.
The restrictive, oppressive, and most insulting legisla-
tion of the trio just named may, however, be successful.
Those parties I never, to my knowledge, heard of before ;
but even feebleness and unpopularity may work wonders in
a case like the present. You may recollect that I addressed
to you a denunciatory letter before the Mackenzie affair
was perpetrated. Ido so again before Messrs. Patten
and Co. have had time to earn the same success, and be
crowned with the laurels of the same virtue as the ex-
M.P. for Liverpool. The people of England are not so
ready to submit to fanaticism as my countrymen, I am
sorry to say, are; and I trust that on this occasion they
will stand forth to vindicate their fair fame as the steady
supporters of civil and moral liberty. That the limited
right existing at present to procure refreshments such as
beer on the Sabbath may be abused, and is abused, in a
moral sense, I am sorry to be obliged to avow ; but the
idea of punishing the community for the faults of some
of its members is monstrous, and exemplified in any
other case would at once arouse indignant opposition.
The law, by an extreme stretch of its power, punishes
drunkenness ; it very properly arms the magistrates
with authority to deprive of license publicans allowing
drunkenness on their premises ; it closes houses of
entertainment during canonical hours on Sunday. Pre-
caution has, therefore, been carried to its extreme limits,
and homage done to the public services of our holy reli-
gion. Surely, in reason, this is quite enough. To de-
prive the poor man of the means of refreshment on the
Sabbath because some get drunk, is a piece of prepos-
terous tyranny, and should at once be resisted in every
constitutional way.
Such legislation is extreme and unusual, and is utterly
unwarranted by the mild, wise, and generous spirit of
the Christian faith. In this country for many years
every approach to sumptuary laws has most properly
been avoided. What we shall eat or drink, or where-
withal we shall be clothed, has been wisely left to the
individual conscience and to personal choice. Sump-
tuary laws are the parent of fraud and hypocrisy, and
tend to demoralise those more immediately employed in
carrying out their provisions. In no country of the
world was the Sabbath more rigidly observed than in
Scotland; but during ages of that piety and virtue which,
right or wrong, called forth the admiration of other na-
tions, such a thing was not thought of as preventing,
under certain regulations, the sale on the Sabbath of the
ordinary beverages of the country—so often employed
even as cordials or adjuncts in numerous forms of ill-
ne-s. This transaction, indeed, was regarded as quite
different from the tragic or commerce which, lawful on
other days, was forbidden on the day of rest.
Laws of the kind under notice proceed on principles
dangerous to the peace and welfare of society. If some
crochetty, prejudiced, or hypocritical persons, without
sympathy with the feelings or situation of others, be al-
lowed to add the force and sanction of law to their va-
garies the dearest rights of the citizen are perilled. At
a former period tyranny was directed against religious
liberty; its work is now against moral freedom, and it can
here operate most successfully. Such evil ordinations tend
to prejudice the citizen against the laws of his country—
to render the administration of public justice obnoxious
—or, as before suggested, depraved. Either the statutes
which are of such a character are not enforced, and are,
therefore, held to be null and void by an authority lower
than that by which they were passed, or, being carried
out, are likely to attract public sympathy towards the
offender, and that from persons otherwise excellent citi-
zens and loyal subjects. This is a bad, an unhappy
state of matters, and statesmen and senators should
eschew what causes the impressions and convictions to
which it is owing.
Let the people of England recollect, too, that if the
bill by which they are now menaced be passed into law
it will remain unalterable. In cases of the kind, unlike
what obtains in matters of a political or religious nature,
there cannot be secured such a pressure from without
as will secure the repeal of even a most unjust and
oppressive statute. A. large number of the people are
timid, and cannot encounter the invectives of fanaticism;
numbers conceal their real sentiments on such subjects ;
and many well-meaning persons, substantially impressed '
with the sentiment that the opposite of wrong is right,
are willing to allow of certain severities in order to ex-
tinguish obvious evils; forgetting all the while that the
vice they deplore may only be more secretly and more
dangerously practical, while great social rights may be
invaded or overthrown altogether. There are other
good things to be secured besides sobriety, and other
evils to be dreaded besides drunkenness. It is not the
abuse, but the use, of moral liberty which here and else-
where is to be reasoned from.
Since the passing of Forbes Mackenzie's bill we have
bad strange work here. The police, of course, are con-
verted into a set of spies on the licensed victuallers, and
one poor woman, who keeps a public-house at Porto-
bello, a watering place, about two miles from the city of
Edinburgh, is under prosecution for selling some liquor
to two persons who came from a distance, and alleged
they were travellers. Numerous prosecutions have been
directed against publicans for contraventions of the sta-
tute. Hotels, as well as humbler places of entertain-
ment, are open to the inroads of the police. A citizen
without family cannot even get a dinner in an inn as
before. In Aberdeen, however, the police commissioners
refuse to allow their constables to be transformed into
teetotal spies, and the new law is, in the meantime, at a
stand still in the "city of bon accord." In some places
the abstainers have formed committees of vigilance, to
see that the law is enforced. One of those impudent
harpies entered a public-house in Dumbarton, along
with a local policeman. He was very properly ordered
to leave the premises by the landlord. He refused, and
an attempt was made to eject him, but so violently did
this man of temperance conduct himself even before the
officer that the life of the publican was placed in peril.
This outrage is to become the subject of a trial in the
jury court here, the damages being laid at a heavy sum.
Of course the partizans of the bill are loud in its praise,
and some of our journals merely pander to the views of
these men. All manner of stories are put afloat through
the press, and strange theories suggested as to the effect
of the new legislation, and the walls are posted over with
abstinence placards of the type common to the school.
Some "Alliance," too, is mentioned, and a " Maine
Liquor Law" is urged and lectured
about. What the
Abstainers lack in number they labour to make up by
activity and forwardness. There is not wanting, also,
a sufficient stock of impudence on the part of their allies
of the journals I might ask the managers of the Eng-
lish restrictive and penal bill this question—. Has any
Scotsman, Forbes 111ackenzie, or a limb of the law, a
noted Teetotaller in Edinburgh, had communication with
you, or have others of the same class and aims interfered,
or have abstinence people in England urged you to your
present enterprise ? The interpellation is important, for
in the bill under notice we may have but the result of a
factious intermeddling with the conscience and the rights
of others.

I need scarcely say to you, sir, that here there are
persons who, if they had the power, would shut up the
highways on the Sabbath, and exclude the citizens from
the green fields—and prevent a journey even of necessity
or mercy on the Christian day of rejoicing and of rest. I
may tell you we have some very high purists in the
Town Council of the city, to whom the bill of the afore-
named Forbes Mckenzie was highly acceptable. The
Provost (or mayor), a cold-hearted canting member of
one of our strictest sects, is at great pains (somewhat un-
necessarily) to prove what he considers the issues of that
wildiand tyrannous measure. Well, a proposal was made
' in the Council to open the Botanical Gardens near the
city—be it recollected when—only after FOUR in the
afternoon of the Sabbath ! This measure of concession
was resisted by the Lord Provost, and also by others of
the voluntary school, who, hostile to the powers of the
civil magistrate in matters of religion, have no great ob-
jection to exercise a part of the obnoxious prerogative
population
so that it embodies itself in their own carcases. The
motion was defeated by a majority of 13 against 9, one
member declining to vote. So much for the bland
liberality of the Edinburgh Town Council. I may men-
t in the
tion that in Glasgow, containing a larger
bei drawn
than Edinburgh, and numbering vastly more of the
sons of toil, the Botanical Gardens are shut through.
e f deeplyeu.r h
oal anxious
x ri
eo
lui
..s
wuld attend Green the Iser:il.lcles
poouvvt,etrheetwhseelme
eofpatrhteieSs,ababatconr;doanndl,vowueldre
aroundtimt
all
abGlelassghoo
gion. Rightly understood, the ways of Christianity are
pleasantness, and her creation are peace.B
to hinder 'a man's r But I see nothing
lee—nor, the sin of ss drunkenne a the Christian jubi-
strictly avoided, the
refreshment of the body by
means
tity of the ordinary beverages theof ofamoderate
country.quau-
I am not
the less confident in these views,
ferocious zeal which characterises from knowing that the
what is called Sabbath-breaking
certain parties against
times exemplifies . < king and drain-drinking
at
itself in those whose
religion is made up of little else than small stock of
this furor. I could
tell you strange stories as to this part of my subject, but
rather choose to forbear.
More
than I could do the
same. I will not at present draw
indulgence ; but trusting that the more largely on your
peopl e of England will
now as hitherto guard and protect their moral as well as
civil rights, I beg
to subscribe
Sir, your obliged
and obedient servant,
SAUNDERS FITZSAUNDERS.
Edinburgh, July.
P.S. May I respectfully beg that the editors of other
journals would, on public grounds, kindly copy this let-
ter into their columns. More may feel gratified at this
act—however humble and imperfect the communication
—than would avow their feelings of approval and sym-
patby.

MADAME TITSSAIJD'S EXHIBITION.—This popular ex-
hibition has ju,t had au important addition—it is a por-
trait model of her Majesty the Queen of Spain, and in
consequence of the stirring events from day to day
passing in her kingdom, great curiosity is felt and ex-
pressed by the numerous visitors who crowd this most
excellent place of in4truction and amusement.