The Sun.
London, England, 1834-05-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Lord Chancellor not only exposed the
absurdities of Lord Wynford's Sabbath Day
Observance Bill in his speech against its
second reading on Thursday, but has recorded
his unanswerable objections to the measure in
a protest to be placed on the journals of the
House of Lords. In every one of his grounds
of opposition we heartily concur, and nothing
more seems necessary to give the public an idea
of the absurdity of the bill, than that in the
opinion of such an authority as the Lord Chan-
cellor, the objections against it should be more
than twice the number of its original clauses.
To the blunders which we pointed out on
Saturday, his Lordship has added several others
which we omitted to expose. When we read '
this bill of Lord Wynford, and five or six other
proposed and (we trust) abortive enactments of
the same kind, which have been introduced
during the present session and the last into
the other House of Parliament, we are also
tempted to ask whether or not we, at pre-
sent, live in a Christian community,—how
we could have so completely abandoned our
religious habits in so short a space of time,
as we must have done, if their representations
are true—and by what authority the select few,
who now take upon themselves the care of our
spiritual welfare, presume to dictate our adop-
tion of their new system ? The most of these
legislative projectors of Sunday regulations
seem to think that there is one code of religious
observance necessary for the rich, and another
for the poor ; that the former may be indulged
in the plenitude of their civil liberty, while the
latter must be 'restrained in the extent of their
social enjoyments, in order to be made pious
and orderly ; and that this process of deteriora-
tion among the working classes, joined. with a
corresponding improvement of the higher ranks,
is still going on, and can only be checked by
additional penalties attached to the breach of the
fourth commandment. Do we then live in in-
fidel times, and is the religion of the nation re-
spected only by a small portion of the higher
ranks, and a few members of Parliament, who
can draw up in very incorrect phraseology op-
pressive regulations for diminishing the enjoy-
ments of their humbler fellow citizens ? We
remember that under the restored Bourbons the
courtiers about the Tuileries affected to consi-
der France as a heathen land, and called in the
Jesuits to convert it to Christianity. We re-
member that these fathers, like Sir Andrew
Agnew, preached home missions—that they
pretended to plant the cross as in Paraguay, or
among infidel savages—that they practised the
most ridiculous mummeries as parts of their
improved system—and that they attempted to
domineer over the people in their civil concerns,
in order to promote their religious conversion.
Have we now a set of Jesuits in this country
with as little sympathy for the general feelings
of the people ? Are we threatened with home
missions, under the authority of acts of Parlia-
ment ? Are the indifferent to be made religious
by famine or compulsory abstinence from enjoy-
ments hitherto lawful ? Are constables or po-
lice officers to be made religious inspectors, and
is the magistrate without thepiety to enforce the
rigorous self-denial of the fanatic ? Let the
higher ranks, whether lords or commoners, whe-
ther persons of fashion or pretenders to puritanism
first reform themselves,—let them show as
much regaid for the souls of their cooks or
coachmen as they affect to feel for the other
humbler classes of society whose services they
do not require on a Sunday,—let them attend
divine service with as much regularity as they
display their equipages in the parks, or meet
their friends at Sunday parties,—let them, in
fact, show an example of a sober and religious
observance of the Sabbath in their own persons
and among their own dependants, and then they
will either have less reason for complaining of
the conduct of their inferiors, or better grounds
for legislating to prevent its alleged excesses.
But how can the tradesman, the mechanic, or
artisan, released from weekly toil, believe that
their legislators are sincere in their desire to
preserve the Sabbath from profanation, while
they see their wealthier neighbours in-
dulging with impunity in every enjoyment
by which it can .be violated ? Probably some
of the " Lord's Day legislators " may be
members of the Zoological Society in Regent-
park. If they are so, we would ask them how
they can justify those Sunday visits to the in-
teresting or non-descript inmates of the gar-
dens, which block up the Park with carriages
and endanger the lives of his Majesty's pedes-
trians, while they would interrupt a harmless
stage-coach, carrying a quiet party of citizens
to get a mouthful of fresh air or dine at an or-
dinary in the neighbourhood of the metropolis ?
Perhaps we may be allowed to express our con-
orript for that outcry about the levity of the
Chancellor which has been echoed by so many
of the public organs ; as if there were not some
absurdities so glaring that reason would be
wasted upon them,—as if a witticism, if pro-
perly applied, is not as suitable a weapon for
destroying error as the most solid argument. We
suppose these people consider " Gulliver's Tra-
vels" mere childish jokes, or Butler's " Hudi-
bras" mere nonsense verse ; just as some rea-
soners of another class, but of similar powers
of understanding, exclaim against Thompson's
" Seasons" or " Paradise Lost," as proving
nothing.— Times.

The " Sabbath-legislation" of all Christian
atimis has remarkably established the principle
that civil government has no legitimate pretence
to meddle with religion ; and we must confess
our surprise that any Protestant dissenters
should be so inconsistent as to countenance pe-
titions calling on the British legislature to coerce
other classes of their fellow-countrymen to a
particular observance of the Christian Sunday.
If we once admit the right of a civil govern-
ment to legislate arbitrarily. on this subject we
concede the justice of ecclesiastical domination,
and we surrender the great " voluntary prin-
piple" of Protestant dissent. But we not only
FOtulemn the principle of this pseudo-legisla-
tion, tint we affirm that no human laws ever
yet did op can secure the compulsory observance
pf the Sunday on the particular tenets of any
class of religionists. The English " Statutes
at large"—the Journals of the two houses of
Parliament—the recorded debates on Sabbath
legislation—the history of the habits and cus-
toms of this. country, all demonstrate the abor-
tive result of statutory compulsion. We have
had laws which placed the people in a strait
waistcoat on a Sunday ; we have had " Books
of Sports" and Ordinances for the purpose of
desecrating" the Sabbath ; we possess heaps
t,rgcobotoyersial publications, sermons, and pre-
-;'Tat,i6.l Chartres and what have been their
reli-
g;ous effects and political consequences ?—that
t the various sects and members of the Christian
communities Of. the empire have severally ob-
-y
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