The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-15 00:00:00

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WITH WHICH
THE " TRUE SUN " IS NOW
INCORPORATED.

LONDON :
SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 15, 1838.

The Herald of this morning blows a loud note of
triumph over the defeat
.of the " IVhig project of
Sabbath desecration by a Sunday delivery of letters."
" The Tory Journals," says the Globe of last night,
" have been recently employed in getting up a clamour
against the Government, for an alleged intention to
open the Post-office on Sundays." Here we have it
all but avowed by the organs of faction, than an ar-
rangement of a purely administrative nature, which, be
it for good or evil, concerns only giving facilities to
commerce and to intercommunication between families
and friends, is made a handle of to effect a despicable
party purpose. The hypocrical Tories, seeing in the
report of a project to open the Post-office, a means of
directing all the strong feelings which arc connected
with religion against the Government, assailed it as
" Godless," dwelt on the horrors which had fallen on
infidel France, and sought to implicate the Whig
iNlinisters in a design to violate the religion of the
country. The not less hypocritical writers of the
opposite party, not content with merely denying any
design to attack religion, hastened to clear the Minis-
ters from any suspicion of wishing to serve the public,
and of rising superior to cant, and declared that the
Ministers never could think of any thing so irreligious
and outrageous, as to wish to have done in London,
on the Sabbath, that which is done in Presbyterian
Edinburgh and Glasgow, in Catholic Dublin, and
in every other town of the empire, without the shadow
of a shade of inconvenience, of criminality, or of
blame. We were obliged yesterday to find fault with
a Morning Contemporary for vying with the Tory
Journals in a deference to the cant of the day ; and
following in its wake, as if there were a settled design
on the part of the Ministers to cast off from
themselves all suspicion of entertaining an en-
lightened policy, and being honestly resolved to
serve the public. In spite of the hypocritical
cant and clamour of the Tories, the Globe of last night
hastened to assure the public that the " Government
never at any time entertained the intention of making
the alleged alteration." To shield the Government
from the accusations of the hypocritical Tories—which
to all rational men are an honour—the Globe and the
Chronicle are eager to convince their readers that " this
subject was forced on the notice of Government by a
Parliamentary Committee," which, therefore, and not
the Government, deserves all the epithets of God-
less" and " Infidel," with which the Tories have
stigmatized that act in London which is neither
godless, nor infidel, nor irreligious in Edinburgh, and
Glasgow. Our Morning Contemporaries, both Tory
and Whig, who desecrate the Sabbath every week,
have a different morality for London and Edinburgh,
or even for London and Barnet. What is a horrible
desecration at St. Martin's-le-Grand, is quite vir.
tuous at the first stage out of town. We regret
much to see the Press lending itself to such a mockery
of holiness, and taking up arms against a useful, and
even necessary improvement, because one party perverts
into get, and the other rejects it, because it is afraid
of losing office. How long the present Ministers may
hold office we cannot foresee, but if they are to re-
tire at Easter, as the Tories prognosticate, they should
be anxious to leave behind them a reputation of being
superior to vulgar clamour, and of having designed to
confer on the country a great administrative im-
provement.

As we said yesterday, however much the priests
may insist on all other labour but thcirs—for they la-
bour exclusively on Sunday—being then suspended—
that all men, women, and children, may listen only to
them, the rigid observance of Sunday as they pre-
scribe it, is not a religious ordinance. Christ did not
take up his abode in the temple, and read or
expound the law on the Sabbath ; he walked
about on that day ; and the observance of
Sunday is more a Catholic than a Christian institu-
tion, as preaching and teaching in churches have
rather a Pagan than a Christian origin. Thus, how-
ever useful it may be to cease from labouring on Sun-
day, that has no warrant in Christianity ; and it is a
scandal to the politicians of both parties, and a scandal
to the political writers in the Press, that they oppose
the introduction of an improvement into the metropolis,
now the centre of communication between 24,000,000
people, to say nothing of its immense foreign connec-
tions, because it is contrary to religion, which is practised
throughout religious Scotland, and even through-
out Europe, without the slightest injury to the reli-
gious feelings of a single individual. It may not be
right—it may be very inconvenient—to open the Post-
office in ,London on Sunday, but if inconvenient and
wrong, it is not irreligious ; and the resistance to the
opening ought to be placed on its true basis, of being
injurious to the ease, comfort, enjoyment, country
rides, and dinner parties of the Cockneys.
AM

orning Contemporary, with great simplicity, ex-
presses astonishment that it was not discovered long ago
how extremely ill-judged it was for the Corporation of
London to allow their cfficers to become the mere tools of
the coal-factors in regulating the coal monopoly. He
might with as much reason express astonishment that the
Corporation, or any of their officers, took illegal fees, or
winked at jobs, or in any way forgot the interests of the
citizens, for paltry concerns of their own. The whole
frame-work of this great Corporate body is bound up
together, and however ill the system has worked for the
inhabitants, as the enormous expenditure of half-a_
million a-year makes them feel, it has worked ad-
mirably for those who, according to their own language,
devote their time and energies to the public good.
Mr. BRA DFIELD has taken some pains to show that
the City functionaries did not serve the coal-factors for
nought—that Aldermen and Common Councilmen
had an interest in the coal monopoly, and that,
owing to the mismanagement of the Corporation alone,
the inhabitants of London had to pay an enormous
price for one of the great necessaries of life. Does
not the result prove the fact ? Since the subject was
taken up by the LORD MAYOR, the Navigation
Committee have carried into effect certain regulations
which, in all probability, will break up the monopoly.
The price of coals, that formerly rapidly advanced at
this season, has been for some time stationary, and lat-
terly has been on the decline ; and, if the good inten-
tions of the LORD MAYOR are not frustrated by his
brother Corporators, or some of their countless cousins,
the poor, even this winter, may feel the benefit of Mr.
BRADFIELD'S agitation. The duty is a trifle com-

pared with the enormous tax levied by the monopolists ;
and were the Corporation to consult the interests of the
public as they have long consulted their own, the price
would in a short time be reduced at least one-third, and
we might have coals as cheap here as at any place
along the south of England.

The first election for Common Councilmen under the
New Charter for Manchester, is a curious indication
of the political and religious feeling of that great centre
of our new constituency.. All the persons elected are
Reformers, and the only contest was between shades
of Reformers. In one district the Torch-light Ra-
dicals, as they are called, got up an opposition, and
mustered 100 votes. Of these Reformers ten only
are Churchmen, and the remaining 38 are Dissenters
of one kind or another from the Establishment. Four-
teen of them, even, are Unitarians, who thus out-
number, amongst the representatives of that hive
of industry, the persons connected with the
Church. We consider this a very remarkable cir-
cumstance, more even for what it indicates in future
than at present. The population of Manchester may
be assumed as an index to the crowing population of
the empire, as the rural population may be taken as
an index to the stationary part of the community.
Amongst the latter, however, lies the strength of the
Church and the Tories, and the prospect this holds
out to them for the next generation, we leave them to
ruminate over. To us it is full of enchanting hope.

We regret to learn that though wheat may now be
imported free of duty, there is scarcely any to bring
in. The Baltic and the Elbe are of course close;:
against us, and we apprehend that nearly all we can
get from the Black Sea has already been obtained, or
is on its way hither. Many of the countries on the
Mediterranean obtain a supply from that quarter, and
it enhances our apprehensions to learn to-day that the
general scarcity affects Sicily and Naples, from which
exportation has been prohibited. Our readers will
find the ordinance in another part of The Sun, and
it will afford them no pleasure to learn, from other
countries being as badly off as England, that they
cannot supply her.