The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-26 00:00:00

THE SUN,

intolerance, then do we eagerly enter our claim to
be classed among the most bigoted and intolerant. If
to raise the voice against a proceeding of systematic
cruelty practised under the guise of piety, and
shrouded under the mask of morality, is illiberal,
then do we rejoice in being placed among the very
foremost who are guilty of this illiberality. We in-
sist upon the bounden duty of the Legislature to pre-
vent the continuance of this great grievance to the
community, this odious sham of excellence, this
enormous and abominable crime against Christianity.
" Mene incept() destere victam,
Nec posse Lehi. Teucrorum avertere regem ?"
The words of VIRGIL may be aptly articulated by
the Press—merely transforming the Trojans into
railway directors and Italy into Scotland. For it is
time, indeed, to inquire how long the population are
to be made the sport of the pharasaic whims of these
religious impostors, and how long the line of transit
between north and south, east and west, is to be ob-
structed by these hedge priests and tub-philosophers.
In another column of this evening's impression will
be found an article, transcribed from the Scotsman of
last Saturday, in which the pretensions to sanetity of
the Campbells and the Barbours is fully exposed.
But one thing more was requisite to divulge the 1164-
lowness of their assumed orthodoxy, and that one thing
has been supplied by a letter inserted in the
Scotsman of yesterday, signed " A Shareholder"
in the Scottish Central Railway. Here are the par-
ticulars recounted by this shareholder, and surely
they are a conclusive testimony of the honesty and
truthfulness, as well as of the eminently evangelical
purity, of the directors and their secretary. Prior to
the opening of the Central Railway during last
March, these directors resolved that the question of
Sunday travelling should be referred to the decision
of the shareholders. For this purpose, in order to
ascertain the opinions of the shareholders, blank
proxies were issued, with a request that the proprie-
tors should write upon those blank proxies their
vote for or against the conveyance of passengers along
the line on Sundays. This was the arrangement. Now
mark the coolness with which the decision of the share-
holders was ignored On the 29th of February took
place the half-yearly ordinary meeting of the com-
pany. Here follow a few very significant particulars,
quoted verbatim from the official accounts :
" Alexander Campbell, Esq., of Monzie, brought
forward the motion of which notice was given at the
special meeting of the 20th ult.—' That no work of
any kind whatever be done on the Sabbath-day on the
Scottish Central Railway.' The motion being se-
conded by Robert Barbour, Esq , of Manchester, was
put to the meeting by the chairman, and declared to
be carried.

" On the question of Sunday trains, proxies were
lodged—
Shares. Votes.
For Mr. Campbell's motion .. 7,218 2,459
Against it ... ... . . 13,661 3,620

Majority against the motion 6,443 1,161
"But these proxies were not used, no counter mo-
tion to that of Mr. Campbell being made."
But these proxiea were not used, ns counter-motion to
that of Mr. Campbell being made_! Well may the
astonished shareholder exclaim that ow -receiving
the report of the proceedings, and reading this last
sentence, he was confounded at its consummate
coolness ! " I began," says he, "to think that it
must be a quiz ; it was too good to be a mere dull
matter of fact I" And yet, with these facts glaring
him in the face, upon the official report of the meet-
ing of the 29th of February, Mr. ROBERT D. Kea
has the effrontery to declare in his recently published
letter of " explanation," that he was precluded from
affording any assistance to her Grace the Duchess of
SUTHERLAND "3Y ♦ ♦OTE OF THE SHAREZOLDERS I"
Really these saints have a faculty for lying quite as
intolerable and enormous as their disposition to
assume the garb and language of a very spurious
sanctity ! The more the matter at issue is examined,
the more the festering ulcer of hypocrisy is probed,
the more disgustingly is it revealed to the heart and
the imagination. We are sick of it. The abomina-
tion must be got rid of. It must be done
away with at once and at every cost. Those
railways which presume to venture upon this
sacred ground of ethics and humanity must pay the
penalty by having their Acts of Parliament repealed.
The Legislature must decree as a law of the land that
trains shall run on Sundays on every line and every
branch line of railroad in the length and breadth of
the United Kingdoms. Upon this point the people
are resolved—they are resolved, like FALSTAFF, that
they will not be sanctimonious "on compulsion"—
they are resolved that this arbitrary power for the
perpetration of evil shall be torn from the grasp of a
few miserable directors—they are resolved that
daughters shall no longer be kept from the death-beds
of their fathers, be those fathers earls or tinkers, cos-
termongers or statesmen, to satisfy the distorted
consciences of a posse of ignorant fanatics. Of reli-
gion the people may exclaim, as NAPOLEON and
CH►ILEMAGNE exclaimed of the iron crown of Italy,
GOD has given it to us, beware him who touches it I

The reply of the directors of the Midland Railway
Company, through their respected chairman, Crzoacia
HUDSON, Esq., to the address of a number of share-
holders resident in Liverpool and its neighbourhood—
which will be found in eur advertising coliiims—is
well worthy of a talus and attentive perusal. The
sound practical sense and great experience of Mr.
Humor; in railway affairs enable him to give com-
plete and most conclusive answers to the various
complaints that have been put forward, and which,
manifestly, emanated from the fertile brains of those
interested in depressing the value of railway stock,
that their own speculative sales of property, not in
their actual possession at the time of making
the contracts, might be attended with the
highest degree of profit. The various doubts that
have been instilled into the public mind, the whis-
pered insinuations, found a local habitation and a
name. Some of the shareholders, " frighted
from their propriety" by the vague rumours
floating about the precincts of the Stock-
Exchange, "screwed their courage to the stick-
ing place" so far as to require certain alterations
in the management, to interfere with the discretion of
the directors by establishing certain fixed rules, of the
expediency and propriety of which they were unable
to form a sound judgment, not possessing the requisite
data to enable them to draw correct eoncl►pions.
And not only did they frame unreasonable and pre-
posterous demands, but they opened their communi-
cation by repeating the offensive insinuation of the
"Bears," which they have made to the great
detriment of the shareholders in every com-
pany, whatever it might be, by ascribing the depre-
ciation in the value of their property to " the want
of public confidence in the integrity of the manage-
ment."

Mr. HuDsoN has well and ably reproved this gra-
tuitous and most unwarranted piece of impertinence,
in a tone,.and spirit becoming a gentleman and a man
of hononi. He demands that the parties who have
affixed their names to the document containing this
slanderous imputation, should immediately " furnish the
directors with a list of the specific charges involved
in the statement, in order that they (the directors) may
convene a special meeting of the company and have the
opportunity of refuting the accusation thus brought
against the integrity of a body of gentlemen who
feel that they stand as high in the estimation of the
public at large as the individuals who have appended
their names to this slanderous document;" and he
adds, with caustic severity, " which comes with pe-
culiarly bad grace from a body of shareholders who,
prior to the appointment of the present directors,'
were only receiving two•and-a-half per cent. divi-
dend, which has since been increased to six and seven
per cent."
He afterwards answers the several suggestions that
have been put forward by the misguided shareholders
who suffered themselves to become instruments in the
hands of their mortal enemies, who, pining for the
destruction of railway property, care little for the
ruin their unfortunate dupes nay draw upon them-
selves by listening toltheir interested councils.
These suggestions are in turn disposed of in the
most fair and straighCorward manner. We would
refer our readers to the letter itself for these re-
sponses, which can scarcely Le condensed or com-
pressed. On the first point, which required the im-
mediate closing of the capital account, he shows that
it is at any time in the power of the general body of
the shareholders to pass a vote to that effect at any
half-yearly meeting, but also points out the absurdity of
saying that if a traffic of 20,0001. or 30,0001. per
annum should require as outlay of 60,000/, that