The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-15 00:00:00

4'. Lai V 1 1 ing

LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 15, 1850.

Tabular reports and epistolary correspondence of a
. very copious character, occupying altogether fifty-
-1 three pages folio of a Parliamentary document re-
cently printed, comprises the whole of the arguments
i for and against the cessation of Post-office labour on
i Sundays. We have turned to the examination of
I these papers with that peculiar satisfaction which is
1 derivable from the perusal of comments on an im-
portant question, couched in language de-
-1 serving all praise for its candour and luci-
I dity, and replete with inferences at once
ilogical, decisive, and satisfactory. Utterly forgetful
lof the abuse lavished upon them by their religious
antagonists, the authorities of St. Martin's-le-Grand
have here repelled the attacks most unjustifiably
Imade against them by statistical records of indis-
-1 putable authenticity. Directing their remarks to the
dignified disproof of accusations whereby their moral
integrity was impeached, the three principal person-
ages at the head of the Post-office Department have
demonstrated that by acting contrary to their present
arrangements they would have been carried into one
or other of the two deplorable extremes which stood
glaringly before them as the only remaining alterna-
tives. They show by " facts and figures "of indis-
Iputable accuracy, that they must either have allowed
matters to remain in their previous position, thereby
necessitating a more numerous attendance of the
clerks and other employes at the provincial offices, or
have bowed implicitly to the dictation of their as-
sailants, thereby inflicting irreparable injury,
more or less, upon all the various classes
of the community. The former proceeding
would have been a connivance at that very evil which
is so loudly reprobated by the people designated Sab-
batarians. The latter would have been a monstrous
land most dangerous interference with the onward
march of civilization. In either case the cause of the
religious observance of the Sunday would have been
materially and most detrimentally affected. By
the first, directly ; by the second, indirectly :
by the latter, mediately; by the former, imme-
diately. For while. the continued demand of
Sunday labour at the money-order offices
in the provincial or branch establishments (a requisi-
tion at present happily dispensed with) must neces-
-1 sarily have grown more and more into an evil prece-
dent, the stoppage of the mail trains, the closing of
all the post-offices of the United Kingdom peremp-
torily on one day out of every seven, the frequent
periodical interference with the working of the chan-
nels of communication must have acted so terribly
against the interests of a great commer-
cial population like that of England, that
a tremendous reaction must, in the end, have been
altogether inevitable—a reaction so overpowering,
from the force of its suppressed and accumulated in-
dignation, that the rules of the Church, and the sug-
gestions of reason, and the incitements of religion,
and the recommendations of the Evangel must have
been set at nought wholly and entirely—a reaction
not by any means incredible or impossible in a sceptic
and unbelieving generation. Consequently it has been
from a solicitude to advance at once the cause of mora-
lity and civilization, to facilitate the attendance of the
1 Post-office clerks to their religious duties on all Sun-
days, and at the same time to forward the interests
of justice and humanity, by maintaining on those
days the continuance of intercommunication between
the different parts of the United Kingdom, that the
changes latterly visited with so much abuse by the
Sabbatarians were contrived and at length carried
into execution. Objects apparently so incongruous
were, in fact, only reconcilcable th rough such novel
and beneficent arrangements. This fact—however
much the sticklers for Sunday stagnation may sneer
at the assertion—is proven in black and white in the
Parliamentary document already particularised.
It is explained very comprehensibly by arith-
metical arguments at once logical and statistical.
It is demonstrated by the lucid narrative penned
with such elaborate caution by Mr. ROWLAND HILL;
by the conclusive and temperate minutes of Lieu-
tenant-Colonel MADERLI; and by the curt and pithy
approvals appended to the different official papers by
the Right Hon. the Postmaster-General, the Marquis
of CLANRICARDN. In testimony of this we refer
with confident satisfaction to the lately printed
" Post-office Return," a document from which we
have made certain important extracts in this even-
ing's impression of our journal. From one of these
most interesting excerpts from the Parliamentary
document, a copy of which is under our elbow while
we are writing, it will be perceived not only how
forcible, but how numerous are the reasons assigned
1 by Mr. ROWLAND HILL for refusing to consent to the
suggestion of the Birmingham memorial, to the end that
there might be on Sundays throughout the kingdom
a suspension of Post •office business. At the same
moment, while pronouncing most decisively against
the practicability of yielding to the requirement of the
Sabbatarians, our great national.: benefactor refers
with a proud and enviable complacency to the results
of his previous innovations in the Post-office depart-
ment, whereby so many generous arrangements have
been effected—arrangements which he declared on the
sth of January to be then "in such a • state
of advancement that in a few days the Sunday duty
throughout England and Wales will have been re-
duced to probably little more than half its original
amount." Let any one of our old friends the Sabbata-
rians put their hands upon their hearts and say (without
lying) that they. have done one half, one quarter, nay
one fractional part of what has been accom-
plished by this vilified Mr. ROWLAND HILL
towards the diminution of the national toil on
Sunday ! Bah ! this is true and practical
morality, this is true, and practical humanity, which,
without making any noisy assumption of godliness,
or of religious superiority, effects vast and incontes-
table ameliorations for the people—doing this, more-
over, without any unjustifiable interference with the
right, the interest, and the consciences of individuals 1
While such have been the results, the happy, humane,
and moralizing results of the changes effected under
the direction of Mr. ROWLAND HILL, the " minutes"
in which Colonel MABEULY, the experienced and in-
defatigable Colonel ISIAT3BELY, has corroborated the
statements of that innovator at St. Martin's-1e-
Grand, contain the subjoined opinion as to what would
be the consequences of a measure authorising
the discontinuance of all Sunday labour in con-
nexion with the Post-office :

" What the effect would be upon the Post-office rove-
' nue, or upon the trade and commerce of the country
generally, it would be impossible to say. In my own
opinion it would be most injurious, as, in point of fact,
the measure would be almost a return, as regards one
clay of the week, to the slow communication which ex-
part present cen various pturys"lace in the kingdom in the early
,
Inasmuch as the Post-office authorities have pre-
vented these calamitous results from paralyzing the
moral, social, and commercial strength of the nation,
shown themselves lovers of humanity,
they have
patriotism,
and religion.