The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-24 00:00:00

ON CLOSING UP PUBLIC-HOUSES
ON SUNDAYS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
Sire—Believing you to be really disposed to promote
the happiness and enjoyment of the poorer classes of the
community, I have been induced to ask your permission
to say a few words on the subject of your remarks,
your paper of March 18, on the endeavours now making
to prevail on the IA gislature to enforce the closing of
gin-shops and beer-shops on Sundays. If I thought
this would really diminish the rational and healthy en-
joyments of the poor, I should oppose it as warmly as
yourself; but believing that it would be greatly for their
benefit, in every point of view, I hope you will allow me
to state the reasons for this opinion.
I am one of those who have always thought the la-
bourers of this country—agricultural, manufacturing,
and every other class—over-worked, under-paid, under.
fed, under-clad, under-educated, and most unjustly de-
prived of many enjoyments to which their claims, as
human beings, as fairly entitle them as those of the
highest in the land :—that the green fields, bright
flowers, and pure air of heaven, were as much designed
for their gratification as for that of the noblest or the
wealthiest; and that any restrictions which impede their
enjoyment of these blessings ought, if possible, to be re-,
moved. I agree with you, therefore, entirely, in the
feeling which induced you to say in the article alluded
to, "If a labouring man is not allowed to take refresh-
ment on a Sunday—if he is not to visit his friends, to
spend the only day he has to himself in rational enjoy-
n ent and amusement, what is he to do?"
Now the closing up the public-houses on Sunday will
not deprive any man of the pleasures you here enume-
rate. His truest and best refreshments are in the whole-
some and abundant meals which his own dwelling affords
him; and his highest enjoyment of these will be when
he is surrounded by his wife and children, or his rela-
tives and friends. These, indeed, will help to recruit his
strength, to increase and purify his blood, to give energy
to his body and cheerfulness to his mind. But will gin,
and beer, and tobacco, or any other of the intoxicating
drinks and substances furnished by the public-houses,
and for which alone he can desire to frequent them give.
him health, strength, or true pleasure? Five millions
of people in Ireland, and three millions in England and
Scotland are ready to answer, after years of practical ex-
perience, that these destroy health, diminish strength,
and, instead of enduring pleasure, produce only a tem-
porary excitement, which almost invariably ends in
nausea, head-ache, fever, loss of appetite, irritability of
temper, and every variety of disgust and pain. Besides
which, the money spent by the poorest person who fre-
quents the gin-shop and the beer-shop on the Sunday,
when their possession of their week's wages, and com-
mand of leisure, induce them to sit for hours at a time
over the gill, the tankard, and the pipe, would maintain
their families in comfort for several days in succession;
and thus the wives and children are deprived of their
proper share of the comfort and enjoyment which they
have a right to ask at their husband's and father's hands.
If persons are travelling, and require food and re-
freshment on the road, or if persons are living at inns
and hotels, as inmates of the house, no one desires that
any restrictions should be placed on their supplies; but
the gin-shops, beer-shops, and taverns, into which so
many thousands who have homes of their own, congre-
gate on the Sundays, are not necessary for such refresh-
ment, and may therefore fairly be put on the same foot-
ing as all other shops where provisions, goods, or wares
are sold.
And then, as to the " innocent amusements and only
recreations of the poor," as you call them in one sen
tepee, and the " rational employment and amusement,"
as you call them in another part of the same article,
can anything be less deserving these terms than the
scenes which the gin-shops and beer-shops continually
display? That they are not so " innocent" as ycu up-
pear to believe, the annals of crime too fearfully prove;
since there is hardly a day in which some cases are not
brought before the police-courts, which show that drink-
ing is the origin of more than half the offences and
crimes committed in England: and this is no new
opinion. Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, no mean
authorities as judges, gave it as their deliberate
opinion that drunkenness was the principal source
of all the crimes known to them in their day,
now two centuries ago ; and the judges of the
present period of 1845 have all borne testimony
to the same melancholy truth, in their several
charges from the judicial bench ; while the keepers
of gaols, the superintendents of huks, the surgeons or
lunatic asylums, the coroners of counties and cities,
and the guardians of the poor, nearly all concur in
tracing the various forms of crime, disease, and misery,
with which they have to deal, to the habits of intoxica-
tion which the gin-shops and beer-shops so fearfully
generate ; and especially on Sundays, as the annals
of the police-courts in every town of the kingdom,
show more than treble the cases of drunkenness on Sun-
days brought up for examination on Monday mornings
than occur on any other day in the week.
They are, therefore, not places of " innocent amuse-
ments," as you suppose ; neither are they places of " ra-
tional enjoyment or recreation." That only is rational
which cultivates, strengthens, and delights the reasoning
faculties of men—gin, beer, and tobacco weaken, con-
fuse, and at last obscure those faculties entirely, in va-
rious degrees, from being unreasonably and obsti-
nately " fuddled" to becoming " dead drunk. "
And as to re-crearlion, or the making a man anew by
reviving his dormant energies into new life, it makes the
strongest men helpless as infants, the cleverest men
drivelling fools, and the more prudent men ungovernably
mad. In truth, ofall the single evils that afflict this country,
there is not one that is half so prolific of misery as this
habit of using intoxicating drinks. Upwards of fifty
millions of money are annually wasted in their con-
sumption—as much wasted as if thrown into the sea.
In addition to which, more property is destroyed by
sea and lands, in wrecks and fires—more sudden deaths
occasioned by brawls and accidents—more disease en-
gendered, from dropsy to delirium tremens—more luna-
cies occasioned by over-excitement of the animal passions
—more poverty occasioned by loss of time, unsteady
work, and waste of wages— through the excessive drink-
ing which gin-shops, beer-shops, and taverns engender,
than by all other causes put together.
Lastly, what shall be said of this monstrous incon-
sistency? If a baker, a butcher, a cheesemonger, or
a grocer keep his shop open on Sunday, he not only
offends tho law, but he shocks public opinion. If a
hatter, or bootmaker, or a tailor, were seen with all his
men in full employment, in an open and large shop on
a Sunday, it would be thought a scandal. Now, these
might be excused on the ground of their trades being
" innocent," and their supplies being really " necessaries
of life." But these are all closed by law and custom,
while the most pernicious trade that was ever carried
on—the traffic by which millions are impoverished,
diseased, and otherwise injured, claims for itself especial
exemption from all restraints of days or laws, and
demands to be free to vend its poisons and make its
drunkards especially on the day set apart by all other
trades to rest, recreation, and devotion.
If you contend that the Legislature should not inter-
fere in such matters at all—the plea comes too late—it
might have been good a thousand years ago, when our
ancestors were little better than the Red Indians of
America ; and if we wish to see the effects of unli-
censed and unrestrained sale of spirituous drinks
among a people, Mr. Catlin will tell us of the
ravages which the " fire-water" has made among
that gradually sinking people. But we live
in a civilised community, under a dominion
of law, and with a general acquiesence in the principle
that " prevention is better than remedy." Hence we
have a preventive police—hence lights in our streets and
highways—hence bolts and bars on our doors. For this
reason gunpowder may not be manufactured in a city
lest it should explode—hence carriages and omnibuses
are restricted to a certain number of passengers, steam-
boats to certain rates of speed in crowded rivers, and
hence, indeed, the many other rules and regulations
which prevent every man from " doing what he will"
even " with his own." Upon this principle all public.
houses are already licensed, on certain condi.
tions, and without such licence none can be lawfully
opened at all. Nay, more, they are already obliged to
be closed during the hours of public worship every.
where ; and have lately been compelled, in London, to
remain closed on Sundays from daybreak till one o'clock,
from which recent curtailment of their hours the greatest
good has already arisen. Let the remaining half of the
Sunday be as much respected by the law as the first
half, and gin-shops and beer-shops be closed to all on
that day, while hotels and taverns, which furnish bed
and board as well as drink, are open only to tra-
vellers and inmates. If this were done, the poor
themselves would be the first to feel its benefit,
and the muddled dreams of intoxicating drinks, and the
suffocating fumes of tobacco must be exchanged for
wholesome food and raiment, green-fields, and fresh sir,
in which husbands and wives, brothers and sisters,
parents and children could all participate together, and
for a much less sum than it generally costs the toper and
the sot for his only single and selfish gratification.
I hope I have said enough to show you that there are
at least some grounds for the proceedings you condemn ;
and I have sufficient confidence in your genuine English
spirit to be assured you will not deny me a hearing, be-
cause our opinions may differ on a subject which all men
are not likely to view through the same medium.—l am,
your obedient servant, J. S. BUCKINGHAM,
March 19, 1845.

Dean Pakenham, bother-in-law of " the Duke,'
has applied to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for a
grant of money to decorate the Cathedral of St. Patrick,
and put the grand reception-room In a state of thorough
repair, in anticipation of her Majesty honouring that
ancit at Cathedral at Divine service next summer.—
Irish Paper.