The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-08 00:00:00

afientua

LONDON, MONDAY, JULY 8, 1850.

To-morrow evening Mr. LocKE's motion for re-
scinding the order relating to ,Post-office Sunday de-
liveries will enable the House of Commons delibe-
rately to decide between the dictates of common
sense and fanaticism. If we are to build up our con-
jectures as to the result of the Honourable Member's
proposition upon the only rational foundations—those
of a calm and dispassionate exercise of the most ordi-
nary judgment—we shall not remain in much doubt
as to the course which will be thereupon adopted by the
popular branch of the Legislature. One considera-
tion must be self-evident to the least reflective among
our representatives, and this consideration
moreover, of a character most intimately affecting their
retention of their seats in Parliament—we mean the
consideration that their votes to-morrow night will
be most closely scrutinised by their respective con-
stituencies. Upon those votes their return at the
next general election is mainly dependent ; for if the
subject about to be brought under discussion is not
one of a nature involving the adoption or rejection of
any grand scheme, either of internal or international
policy, it is one of a yet greater significance to the
vast bulk of the community—being immediately cal-
culated to influence the comfort, the conve-
nience, and the pockets of the population. In
reference to this question of the Post-office
Sunday deliveries, the public at large are actuated
by the most resolute determination to withstand
the retrogressive movement of superstition. If there
is one vice more detestable than another in the view
of the multitude, it is that of cant or religious hy-
pocrisy. Let that fact be borne in recollection by
our Legislators, and let it not be forgotten that the
people who feel the most strongly opposed to these
flagrant acts of the Sabbatarians are the mass of the
ten-pound householders. The saints, it is true, have
loadei the tables of both Houses with petitions in

favour Yof the principles advocated by Lord
ASHLEY and his associates, but—the circum-
stance is worth remembering—it is not electors
alone who can, or do, put their signatures to a peti-
tion. Recent disclosures have shown what little im-
portance can be attached to these very specious docu-
ments. It has been demonstrated in rather painful
colours that in many instances they are the results
either of fraud or intimidation. As to their expre3s-

Mg the real sentiments of the community the mere
notion is altogether preposterous. We obtained a
lamentable proof not very long ago that the
most formidable looking petitions brought
under the consideration of the Houses
of Parliament, may be, and occasionally
have been the accumulated scrawl of pot-boys and
ticket•porters, collected at the street corners, and in-
terspersed at intervals by words of the grossest in-
decency, the lowest slang, and sometimes by epithets
of the most blasphemous description. We would not,
of course, intimate that such are the disgraceful
characteristics of the various petitions forwarded to
the Lords and Commons, in the name and on behalf
of the so-called Sabbatarians. We mention an ac-
knowledged and notorious fact in relation to these sup-
plicatory papers simply in testimony of the valueless
nature of many of these petitions from the supposed

population. Doubtless, among those who have in•
scribed their names upon several of these documents,
many have been instigated to du so by the purest mo.
tives, and by feelings of the most, conscientious since.
rity. But many a'so, it is well known, and those consti•

sluing the majority, have either been intimidated into
so doing, or have assumed to themselves a representa-
tive character to which they were by no means entitled.
For example, in one or two of the Scottish cities and
boroughs, men have come forward and petitioned
Parliament in the name of large classes of the

community—and those classes of the corn
muuity have, meanwhile, sympathised not in the
slightest particular with their proceedings. One
or two medical men, for instance, have pertly spoken
to the Government or to the Legislature in the name

of the physicians of a wide and populous locality—
those physicians being at the very time in profound
ignorance of their chicanery and machinations I It
bas been over and over again, in regard to divers
Trades and professions, the illustration of the old story

of the three tailors of Tooley-street calling themselves
the people of England.
Another consideration of very striking and sig-
nificant importance is entitled to the serious attention
of the Parliament and of the Government. We allude
'o the consideration as to what would be the course
pursued in regard to these Post-office Sunday deli-
veries daring time of war, or in case of invasion.
Where would be the regulation of the day of unin-
terrupted repose under such an extraordinary pres-
sure of circumstances ? And if under ordinary cir-
cumstances the transmission of intelligence on the
Sunday is sinful, equally sinful would it necessarily
be under these or under any other extraordinary
circumstances : the deduction from all which is of
course sufficiently obvious. It is sufficiently obvious
that the pious project of the saints is altogether im-
practicable, and that it cannot pass scatheless through
the old ordeal of the reductio ad absurdum. Mai
would be allowable in time of war cannot, of course,
be culpable in time of peace, consequently, if, in the
event of an invasion, it would be allowable to send
intimation of the landing of foreign troops on any
portion of the coast up to the seat of Government, it
must be equally allowable at any period, and under
any position of affairs, to withstand this intolerable
scheme of a periodical stagnation. The logic of the
thing is clear and unanswerable. Religion is as much
religion to belligerents as it is to the most pacifically
disposed.
As a glaring evidence of the feeling entertained,
upon the subject of these Postal restrictions by the
population of the metropolis, we may refer to the pub-
lic meeting convened this evening, at seven o'clock,
in the London Tavern, presided over by Douala;
JERROLD, a man of large popularity. We would
especially call the attention of Hon. Members to the
fact of this assemblage of citizens in the heart of the
British capital, seeing that it is the last public mani-
festation of the real sentiments of the community
upon the question at issue—sentiments which we are
satisfied must be echoed to-morrow evening, in the
House of Commons, by a large majority of the popu-
lar representatives.

Many complaints have recently been preferred, as
well in public journals as in the popular branch of
the Legislature, with respect to the alleged ill-treat-
ment to which Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN has been sub-
jected since his arrival at the colony Is Web has been
selected as the scene of his exile. Mr. CHISHOLM
ANSTEY, on Tuesday evening, brought the subject
under the consideration of the House of Commons by
moving for an inquiry into the circumstances
under which a letter, addressed by the unfor-
tunate and misguided gentleman to a Member of
Parliament, had been intercepted and opened in
Van Diemeo's Land by the local authorities. The
discussion which then took place will be eminently
useful, as it must completely remove any unfounded
impressions that may have been entertained with '
respect to the course of discipline and line of conduct
pursued toy do that gentleman, and entiAely