The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-10 00:00:00

Sir IL INGLIS, in flung to address the House, fslt that
he was about to take the place which ought to be occupied by
a member of her Maiesty's G.vernment, because the present
was a question in which the honour r f their Jtoysil Mistress
was concerned.—(oll, oh.) The Ministry- might have come
down to the House and asked them to rescind the order
before they submitted it to the Crown for approval; but,
after what had taken place, the Government now ought to
defend the course which they had recommended the .Sove-
reign to adopt. Did the House know how the employes in
the Post-office had spent the first Sunday during which this
measure had liberated them from their ordinary dutie? At
Bristol between 40 and 50 of them assembled to render thanks
to God for the boon which had been conceded to them; in
Manchester, 65 of them attended the church of the Rev. H.
Stowell, who took art active part in the movement; and at
Liverpool, 75 Post-office clerks and letter carriers walked to
church four abreast on the occasion. The Hon., Gentleman
then referred to the evidence adduced by Lord Overstone
(then Mr. Jones Loyd) before a Committee in 1838, with
regard to the great moral good accruing from the cessation of
the, ordinary pur.uits of the week on Sundays, and concluded
by calling on the noose to adhere to its Iyevious decision.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL—Sir, the Ilonoureble Gentleman
who has just sat down has appealed so directly to the GJ-
vernment, that I cannot 11.1 p rising to explain the position
in which wo stand with regard to this questi 3n. My Hon,
Friend will not deity, that the proeositien erleinally mate
did cot meet wish our support. But my Hon. Friend seems
to forget the circumstance that it is not in our own power to
withheld from the Sovereign an eddreee reseed
House.—(Hear, bear.) Tile House haying; agreed to the
address, and u
Members of this llose bel g'Slenthers of the
Privy Council, we did not thielt we could have been, justi-
fied in withholding that address from the Crown, which this
HOili.e had directed chunk! be presents I to her Iflajesty, and
this is a cue of the particular difference which, as I stated
on a former occasion, draws a distinction between an address
and a simple resolution of this House which remains on its
journals, and may be erased or rescinded on the following
day. Well, having accordingly presented the eddress to ter
Majesty, we were bound to give come edelee respecting it,
and I own it appeared to me, aesnin a consultation my col-
leagues were of the same opinion, that the only course
we could pursue was to advise her Majesty to comply
with the address,—(ffeer, hear,) At the same
time I did not disguise from the Sovereign,
any more than my Honourable Friend has not disguised
his sentiments from the House, that that vote of the House
of Commons was not in accordance with our opinions.—
(Hear, hear.) T certainly could have wished that this sub.
ject had not donee on again so soon for consideration. How-
ever, the question is now brought before me, and I am bound
to express my opinion and record my vote on the subject. I
own that I do not think the shutting of the Post-office on
Sundays is a question perfectly analogous, to the practice of
ordinary labour on the Sunday; nor do J either think it a
question that is to be deterunned by the number of great
bankers in easy circumstances who are ready to support
either view with ,respect to it.— (Hear, hear.) With regard
to the Post-office, there is this distinction between
Sunday labour there and other classes of Sunday
labour, namely, that the cessation of Sunday labour
in the Post-office does not confine the delay in the trans-
mission of letters from one place to another to one day only,
but extends to two days. A party writing from London
to Glasgow has his letters delayed partly in London,
partly on the road, and partly at Glasgow. The con-
sequence
is, that if you shut up the Post-office on Sunday,
there will be one day of the week which is a day of rest
at the London Post-office, and another day's rest from
the labour performed in the provincial post offices. ' But if
you decide that in every part of the country the Post-office
shall be closed in the same way on Sunday, it is evident that
there is more than one day out of the seven during which the
interruption of the communication will extend. Letters
could not be delivered until Monday morning, and, there-
fore, postal communication is not similar to those questions
which regard most other species .of Sunday labour and the
laws and regulations which the country has adopted with
respect to them. Now, as to the consequences which flow
from such a regulation as the one new enforced in compli-
ance with the recent address from this House, I do not
think, as I have already stated, that commercial correspond-
ence is the ckief matter to be considered.—( Hear, hear.) I
think if it was merely commercial correspondence that is
concerned, it would be quite right to stop all labour in the
Post-office on Sunday, and that persons at Manchester or
Glasgow, who are engaged in commercial affairs should not
have their business correspondence delivered to them on
Sunday. As far as concerns commercial men in these
towns, there is nothing to prevent them from carrying on
their business on another day. But it is a very different
question as far as regards the family and domestic
affairs of the community, because it concerns their gene-
ral well-being, or the voyages of individuals from abroad,
and still more because it concerns the illness, and it may be
the imminent danger, of near and dear relatives. And, &r,
I cannot lose sight of this circumstance, that here is a par-
ticular department of the state peculiarly charged with the
business of carrying letters, and armed with all the powers of
the state for preventing other persons from interfering to
perform that duty.—(Hear.) It is therefore ch.srged ex-
clusively, and takes upon itself exclusively to perform this
particular duty. Supposing it conveys aletter on a Saturday
evening from London, informing a daughter that her father
is dangerously ill, and unless she sets out immediately she
may never see him again alive, or receive his blessing; and
supposing that that letter having arrived in a provincial
town early on Sunday morning, is there detained for 24 hours,
in the post-office, while the daughter, knowing, perhaps, of
her father's illness, is sufftiring all the agonies of protracted
anxiety during these 24 hours, until she is at length i
permitted to see her letteg. remember there was a case
that excited much attention not very long ago—the case I
of the Duchess of Sutherland—whose father was dying at 1
Castle Howard. It was generally thought at the time very
hard that she should not have been allowed to enter the
railway carriage to proceed to see her father.before he ex-
pired, and the occurrence attrac'ed much attention, owing
to the rank and conspicuous position of the person to whom
the refusal was made. But this very circumstance which
shocked the minds of so many people, from the apparent
barbarity and cruelty of preventing a daughter from going
to her father, we might have repeated at present, under the
recent postal change, every Sunday; but with this differ-
ence, that the hardship would be confined to poor families,
who could pay a penny for a letter, but who could not afford
to send a telegraphic message or a parcel by railway; and
this might occur in 50 or 100, or even in 300 instances for
what we know, every time we detained letters in the Pos..-
office on Sunday. 1 own that I think, if we are to adopt
this motion, we should take it in the sense in which I con-
ceive it is intended, namely, for an inquiry, whether yon
cannot confine the delivery- of letters on Sunday witt,in
such a short time as will enable the clerks in the post-chines
of these towns to attend Divine service, and enjoy some re-
creation. I think that is an object which is very desirable,
and which, as far as I can judge, it would be far from impos-
sible to attain. If that is the case, then, I certainly should
consider it would be better to omit the last words of the reso-
lution, and that, instead of reverting to the former rule
pending the proposed inquiry, it would be advisable to con.
tinue the present regulation in the interim, care being
taken that the inquiry should be conducted as speedily as
p ssible,—(l-lear, hear.) •
Mr. MUNTZ had supported the former resolution of the
House on this subject, because he regarded it as a great ob-
ject to the working man not to be employed on Sundays
unless upon business of necessity. He had had a personal
reason fog it, because he had not had for years a comfortable
quiet Sunday, owing to the multitude of letters he received
on that day.—(Hear, hear, and laughter.) During theshort
time for which this regulation had keen in force he had
never sustained the slightest' inconvenience from it, and he
had had the pleasure of enjoying what he never did before,
comfortable Sundays. He had received letters from various
parts of the country, approving of the resolution, and stating
the advantages experienced from it ; but never one against
it. It was true he had seen anonymous letters in newspapers
complaining of it ; but he put them down for what he
always believed such letters to be—the composition of the
editor, or of some person employed on the newspaper.—(A
laugh.) He had given the resolution his support in the
first instance, after a very large meeting of his townsmen, at
which ten persons out of eleven were in favour of it.
Mr GLADSTONE was not quite certain that he had ac-
curately gathered the meaning of the Noble Lord. Did he
propose simply to omit the last clause of the motion of the
Hon. Member for Honiton, praying her Majesty that, pending
the inquiry, the delivery of letters should be continued, leav-
ing the rest of the motion unaltered?
Lord JOHN RUSSELL—Yes. .
Mr. GLADSTONE would then suggest to the Noble Lord
that alteration would not meet the reasonable objections that
were entertained to the motion. If the Noble Lord would
take a day or two to consider—(No, no)—the precise form of
the motion that should be submitted to the House, he
thought that would be the totitse most likely to meet the
convenience of the House, and to lead to an amicable
settlement of the question. if not, the Noble Lord, .how-
ever well he might intend, left the motion cpen to the, most
important of the substantial - objections that were urged
against it. He for one decidedly objected to come to a vote
,lento: ing that sensible inconveniences had been experienced
from the arrangements lately adopted, as the resolution would
be left. Having heard the statement of the Government,
and theobjections which had been brought against the motion
of his Noble Friend (Lord Ashley), he very much wished
that the subject, when first brought forward, had received a
more full discussion. But the moth n was passed by the
House, and to rescind the decision of the House was rather
a serious matter, the more so when it was done so suddenly
that it was perfectly plain that it was not done from expe-
rience.—(Hear, hear.) However anxious he might be to
secure to working men the immense boon and blessing of
cessation from Sunday labour, he was not prepared to say
that in somecases for the public convenience that boon should
not be withheld, but you could not say you were sensible of
the public inconveniences that arose from the cessation of
the delivery of letters, when, in point of fact, you
had not watched the -working of the new system
any length of time, and were merely acting upon
a foregone conclusion -eetertained before the motion
of his Noble Friend with the same force as it was en-
tertained now.—( Hear, hear.) But if it were objectionable
to rescind the resolution of that House, much more was it
objectionable that they should now take the course they were
invited to take as regarded the measure. On the 30th May
an address was agreed to, praying the Crown to put a stop to
the delivery of letters on Sundays. It by no means followed
that the answer of the Crown was to be a mere echo, of the
address; it was in the power of the Crown to 'eke en inter-
mediate course, to institute inquiries, and proceed with
caution ; but Ministers . hougbt themselves bound to give at
once full and absolute effect to the address voted by the
House. The answer to the address was received on the 10th
of June, end the 23d of June was the first Sunday on which
the delivery of letters was stopped. He was not prepared,
and he hoped the House was not prepared, on the 10th of
July, to come to a vote declaring that they were convinced,
meaning of course that they were convinced by observation,
of the results of the great public inconveniences resulting
from the new arrangement.- (Rear.) The Noble Lord now
virtually called upon theta to retrace their steps, by condemn-
ing a course that had been in, operation only three Sun-
days, and he did not think it fair to the Crown that, having
induced the Crown to take a 'very decided measure in
consequence cf the address of that House. they should
now, within three weeks, virtually invite the Crown to
take a different course.--( Hear, hear.) The question was
not now the same as was before them on the 30th May.
With respect to the personal and family inconveniences, on
which the Noble Lord had dwelt, it was perfectly obvious
that this was a question of degree, and that the same thing
might arise in towns where there w no second delivery on
Sunday, and they must place against this the immense ad-
vantages that would flow from the strict observance of the
Sunday. If they wished to preserve their own consistency,
their due relations towards their. Crown, or the dignity of the
Crown itsaf, in the face of the country, this was not a time
at which they should re-open the question.—(Hear.)
Mr. RICE-concurred with the Right Hon. Gentleman who
had just addressed the House in thinking that they ought
not to vote the resolution as it would stand with the omission
of the last clause.

Mr A. B. HOPE supported the motion, wishing to esta.
Wish a rational and Christian, and not a Judaising observ-
ance of the Sunday.

Lord JOHN RUSSELL thought, after what had fallen
from the Right Honourable Gentleman the Member for the
University of Oxford, it would be desirable to come to some
understanding as to the proper form of the resolution. It
appeared to him that it would be quite aufdelent, leaving out