The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-26 00:00:00

atelliaft r

LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 1849.

Cant has gained the day in Parliament. One hun-
dred and thirty-one of our Representatives have
negatived the Bill by which the Hon. Gentleman
the Member for Honiton has been striving to beat
down the sanctimonious insolence of the Sabbata-
rians. There is, consequently, as we intimated only
the other evening, no further doubt as to the neces-
sity of a hand to hand encounter with these arrant
humbugs, the religionists. After a little sharpshoot-
ing in the way of sundry petitions up to the Le-
gislature, after the succession of skirmishes between
the belligerents on the occasion of the first and
second readings, they have eventually thrown aside
the weapons suitable for a more distant encounter,
and closed upon each other, foot to foot, knee to
knee, for the settlement of their very serious differ-
ences. Now that we have lost, for the time being,
the measure introduced to the Commons by Mr.
Loess, we are only the more eager to accept the
gauge of battle, and we do so cordially on the simple
understanding that there shall be No Quarter!
When we had ►ast the gratification of express-
ing our opinion upon this moot question as to
Sunday travelling, we avowed at once that the saints
of Scotland would very soon drive the vast majority
of the population of the United Kingdom to the alter-
native of riot in the streets, or of submission to their
ignorant domination. They are fulfilling our pre-
diction faster than we had anticipated. For we looked
to the Imperial Parliament for the prevention of such
a calamitous alternative, and the Parliament has merely
shown itself to be infected by the prevailing hypocrisy.
As to the choice of the multitude, there is not the
shadow of a moment's hesitation. Submission to the
decrees of a wretched minority of fanatics is altogether
out of the question. As well expect the English
people to revive the age of the Roundheads. To
state the case distinctly in little more than half-a-
dozen syllables—the population will not submit to the
dictation of a contemptible squad of psalm-singers,
whatever a few whining petitioners may say to the
contrary, in spite of that very clerical layman Mr.
Jou. PEMBERTON PLUMPTRE, and.in defiance of an
accidental superiority on the part of the Sabbatarian
voters in the Commons House of Parliament. The
fanatics in the present instance are the aggressors,
and they must abide the consequence of their aggres-
sion. They are endeavouring to cram their very
corruptible sanctity down the throats of the multi-
tude, and they must not feel surprised if, in retalia-
tion, or rather in self-defence, the multitude hurl
back their impudence in their teeth—with a slight
accompaniment 1 Theirs is the provocation—theirs
be the consequence.- We can promise them no
sympathy. Not a jot. Their tyrannical affectation of
morality has removed them for ever beyond the reach
of our condolence.

A few words as to the absurdity, not to say the " -
decency, of their late proceedings. • • • Within
the present week it would appear that a deputationn
from Newcastle-on-Tyne waited upon the Home
Secretary for the purpose of urging upon the Govern-
ment the necessity of opposing the Bill introduced by
the Hon. Dilembel for Hooiton—this highly moral
deititatioiiconsi,ting of the Rev. Lewis PARGE, of
one Mr. GEORGE BELL, and of a most extraordinary
functionary, the Reverend T. BAYLEE, designated
in the court Circular as Secretary to the London
Lord's-day Society. The Country Lord's-day being
of course quite a different sort of an affair altogether !
All that we can make out of the official character of
this same, dignitary being, that he bears some
relation to: the great civic authority at the Man-
sion-house, the LORD MAYOR being the only
London Lord we know of, and the London
Lord's-day, meaning, of course, the ninth of
November As to tho moral of the deputation,
however, in which- this Rev. T. .131YLSZ occupied

such a very conspicuous position, as Secretary of
the London Lord's-day Society, it is merely neces-
sary to remind the public that the principal mem-
bers of the deputation were from Newcastle, to
disclose the religious hypocrisy of the whole tran-
saction. From Newcastle ! where so many wretched
beings, not less benighted in soul than in body, are
kept toiling like beasts of burden underground in the
coal pits, without any regard to the recurrence of the
Sabbath, or of the Sunday, from Christmas to Christ-
mas. It is the parable of the mote and the beam
realised. Get you back to your districts of collieries
you Reverend and Ir-reverend members of the Ne w-
castle Deputation, and render your own neighbour.
hood reputable before you presume to come preaching
your mock morality to the population of the three
Kingdoms ! Cleanse your own consciences before
you arrogate to yourselves the right of purifying the

lives of the general community ! Remove from
yourselves the odium of your own short-comings
before you have the insolence to foist your own
spurious doctrines of sanctity upon the mass of an in-
telligent empire ! Think not that in the middle of
the nineteenth century the million can swallow a
species of cant so gross, that at the very sight of it
the soul of SURFACE would have sickened and the
stomach of CANTWELL have revolted. Thank GOD
the time for superstitution has gone by, and not all
the galvanic experiments of the Sabbatarian conspi-
racy can lead to its resuscitation. Majorities of nine
may be gained in the House of Commons, but the
people are, nevertheless, not to he deceived by peti-
tions, or humbugged by deputations, or bamboozled
11 by the sophistical arguments of the sanctimonious.

It is maintained that by carrying such a measure
as the one rejected last evening, the Legislature
would be doing violence to the consciences of the
religionists. As if those religionists were not a
most paltry minority ! And as if by conceding to
their requirements we should not be doing most
grievous violence to the vast majority—their anta-
gonists ! Again, it is insisted that the prevention of
travelling on the Sundays is essential for the regenera-
tion of the community, although the criminal
returns prove that vice and depravity are fourteen per
cent. greater in Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and
Edinburghsbire, than in Yorkshire, Lancashire and
Middlesex ! It is declared by the Sabbatarians that
their aim is the prevention of the desecration of, Sun-
days by the diminution of labour. And yet in the
face if this it is demonstrated by unanswerable sta-

tistics that the stopping of the line between Glasgow
and Edinburgh has conduced to a very demoralizing
consumption of malt liquors and ardent spirits on
days that might otherwise have bee* innocently em-
ployed in rambling through the fields. and between
the hedgerows ! It is shown, moreover, by the most
simple calculations that the system of obstructing the
lines of the Scottish railways on Sundays, instead of
diminishing the manual labour of the inhabitants
of Scotland, has tended materially to its increase—
stage-coaches, postehaises, flies, cabs, steam-boats,
hacks, gigs, and other conveyances, being called into
requisition, besides the guards, stokers, engine-
drivers, gatekeeper 3, and pointsmen required in con-
nexion with the working of the mail-trains. Mr.
LOCRE himself declared yesterday, on the floor of the
Commons, that while on the same occasion the pas-
sengers arriving by the Caledonian Railway only
employed five cabs, he himself had, on Easter Sun-
day, seen in waiting at four churches in the Lothian-
road, in Edinburgh, thirty-one two-horse carriages,
thirteen one-horse carriages, and one hundred and
forty-nine cabs ! So much for the consistency, the
truth, the decency of these highly moral sticklers
for periodical sobriety. So much for their- precepts,
and so much, just so much and no more, for
their example! Out of the sixteen• railways

intersecting the shires of Scotland it would seem
that at the present moment eight are working and
eight are not working passenger trains along their
lines on Sundays—the former moiety comprising an
extent of 280 and the latter an extent of 240 miles.
Taking the distinction between these companies given
to them by the Hon. Member for the city of Dublin,
the reasoning is inevitable, that while the 1,623,000
persons who travelled by the irreligious railways
" were driving at a railway pace to a place that shall
be nameless," the 1,572,000 persons who journeyed
within the same interval along the religious railways
were going at an equally smart pace along the path
leading directly to salvation. Or, following out the
supplemental argument of Mr. REYNOLDS, the
logic of which is impassable, if the thing
be locked upon as culpable in one quarter,
and is not culpable in another, then,
morality must be regarded as a mere conventionality,
and sin must be looked upon as geographical.
In conclusion, we warn these fanatical pretenders

to godliness from the prosecution of their endeavour
to obstruct the railways throughout Scotland ; and
we earnestly put to them the simple, but touchicg
and beautiful application of that expression of
a great poet, which was yesterday repeated by the
Hon. Gentleman the Representative of Honiton
(notwithstanding its being so hackneyed by quota-
tion)—we put it to them whether they will not
elevate the hearts, and purify the morals, and in-
crease the religious fervour of the working classes
by enabling them to pass on their only day of leisure
from the fetid impurities of our large manufacturing
towns into the green lanes and meadows, there to
commune with the CRHATOR through his creations,
and to