The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-02-01 00:00:00

TO THE, SHAREHOLDERS OF THE EDINBURGH
AND GLASGOW RAILWAY COMPANY.

Ladies and Gentleman,—ln the providence of God you
have been suddenly set on an eminence to which the eyes of
the Scottish people are eagerly turned. You have been in-
vested with a power which will soon be exerted for great good
or great evil to this land. Motives of patriotism or profit,
or both, may have induced you to enrol your names as share-
holders of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway ; but, now
that you have been enrolled, a more momentous question
re ex- comes before you than the stimulus given to trade, or the
al probable amount of your dividends. in the mysterious or-
le dinations of God, it bas devolved on you to say whether
a Scotland is still to enjoy her Sabbaths, or henceforth to mourn
them lost—whether the next generation of our countrymen
it shall retain their fathers' birthright—one whole day in seven
- for sacred rest, or be doomed to toil incessant on from the
- cradle to the grave. An instrument has been put into your
hands, and soon you must wield it, wherewith to bless or to
curse this nation. We are watching the issue. Trusting in
the Lord who ruleth over all, we address ourselves to the
• creatures of his hand. Having first made our prayer unto
God, we now employ the pains to persuade men. If at this
moment notices were in your hands summoning you to Glas-
gow on the 25th February, as a jury in a trial on which a
brother's life might depend, you would feel a strong consci-
entious desire to decide justly and according to law. You
are summoned to decide a case which involves a life multi-
plied by millions and extending through eternity. Remain-
ing on the roll of shareholders you cannot be neutral. For
or against the Sabbath you must be. You will do well to
make up your minds. It is unwise to act at random. After
you have signed your mandate at home, or given your vote
at the meeting, you cannot lie down to sleep at ease, if even
the suspicion lurks in your breast that you have been fight-
ing against God.
There are many points of common interest to us and you,
as men and members of the -Fame community ; but it is
specially as ministers and elders that we address you at pre-
sent. It is our duty to worn you; and you are hereby
warned—Do not this great wickedness and sin against God.
Beware of seeking shelter beneath the miserable argument
by which some attempt to prove that the Sabbath law was
repealed by Christ. It is a lying refuge. It will not cover
you. Before any man affirm that the law of the Sabbath has
been annulled, he must be able to point to an express statute
of repeal. But no such statute of repeal exists; for Christ
came not to destroy, but to fulfil, the law. It is in vain, also,
to taunt us with the severe punishments denounced in some
parts of the Jewish polity; for we do not adopt it. We
adopt the moral law—the law given from Sinai and recorded
iu Israel—the rule of life to MEN. It contains no penalties
inflicted by human hands. Its only sanction is the displea-
sure of God. The legislature of every country are bound to
adopt the law, and enforce it by the sanctions which to them
may seem best. Christ adopted it unaltered. He obeyed
and taught it. He announced the sum of it under two heads
—love to God and love to men. These two commandments
He said were binding. Every one then knew, and every
person of common understanding since has seen clearly that
our Lord refereed to the first and second tables of the law,
as it was known among the Jews. The great commandment
—love to God—they knew to be the first table of the Deca-
logue, as given on Sinai. The Sabbath law was,in it, and
this teacher sent from heaven did not take it out. One part
of the "great commandment" is, " Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy ;" and Christ, when he came, did not
destroy that or any part of the law. He cleared away the
abuses which the Jews had heaped upon them ; but never, by
word or deed, did he set aside any one of the ten command-
ments. On this subject we acknowledge no human authority.
Men may unite in testifying that they think the sanctification
of the Sabbath a needless or hurtful restriction ; but none of
these things move us. " The LORD is our lawgiver," and
our Judge too.
We beseech you, ladies and gentlemen, to respect our feel-
ings as Scotsmen. Be assured they are not the least reputable
and influential portion of the community to whom the sight
of Sabbath traffic on the railway will be bitterness of spirit.
It is painful to think, that though our cause is good, and our
argument valid, we should be driven to plead anxiously for
our Sabbath as a mere matter of speculation and controversy,
allow passion and interest to overbear our righteous claim.
For your own sakes, as well as ours, have respect to the
character of your servants. In Scotland, be assured, they
are not the most trustworthy men who will be found willing
to follow their usual occupation on the Sabbath. They who
fear God will refuse the bribe ; and the lives of the passengers
must be entrusted to irreligious men, who have been accus-
tomed to desecrate the Sabbath. This one point were enough
to: settle the question, if it were fully known. The safety
of the passengers depends very directly on the high character
of the servants, and the gain of the company depends very
directly On the safety of the passengers. It is stated in the
newspapers, that the receipts on the Great Western Railway
during the week following the late accident, were fifty per
cent. less than they bad been on the week preceeding. Let
it be remembered too, that in Scotland you must go much
lower down in the scale than it is necessary to go in England,
to get men to work for gain on the Sabbath. Godliness is
profitable to all things.
In another way, ladies and gentlemen, you may find out
that our warning has some weight. We represent a portion
of the community, who, we hope, will be able to bring an ar-
gument into position against Sabbath trains, which will tell
directly on the sense of profit and loss. No one supposes
that the profits of the Sabbath traffic will be great. It is no
extravagant calculation to expect that, by withholding all
support from the railway, we shall lessen the amount of the
week's gain by more than the whole receipts of the Sabbath.
In this way we have been signally successful in Scotland al-
ready. We shall try again. We presume, ladies and gen-
tlemen, that you will not persist in the Sabbath traffic when
you are convinced that it lessens your dividends. We pre-
sume few of you will be prepared to sacrifice your weekly
profits by trading on the Sabbath, on the blasphemous pre-
tensions put forth by one of the directors, that duty to God
demands it.
We entreat you to pity the poor of this land. Do not in-
troduce a system which will wrest from them their weekly
day of rest. They will not become better workmen and bet-
ter servants by being taught to desecrate the Sabbath : and
in the destruction of religious principle among the workinF
classes, the community may be made to reap the bitter fruit,
of your profane determinations. We entreat you to pit
also -

o the rich

We wish to save rich men from ihemselv€

air cares are creeping over them : and they will madly mul,
ily these cares. Their very souls are cleaving to the dust.
iocked in its intoxicating embrace, they are impatient of the
,artial interruption of the Sabbath. Joined to their idols,
they wish to be let alone. We will not let them alone. We
will cry aloud, and spare not. Already you spend too
much time on the world, and too little for a near and
rapidly approaching eternity. You must soon depart. You
cannot take your riches with you. You should have some
time secured for setting your heart on a better inheritance.
The use made of the Sabbath trains by very many would be
to spend the holy Sabbath in business or amusement. It is
thus that the Sabbath breaker lives without God in the world.
We know he must meet with God soon—we wish to afford
him time for it now. The present aim of the destroyer is to
blot out the hallowed light of the Sabbath, that in the dark-
ness he may more securely prey upon your life. We will
continue our effort to save money-making and pleasure-seek-
ing men from destroying themselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, the decision of this question lies in
your hands ; but remember you are in the hands of God. His
eye is on you, and his judgment will await you. You may,
by your secretary's pen, blot out the Sabbath's rest from the
book which records your gains ; but it remaineth written in
another hook which you cannot reach. You may put down
the uplifted voice of God's people in the bustle of a railway
meeting; but the whispering of an aggrieved conscience may
yet be heard within the curtains of a dying bed. You may
vote away from Scotland her Sabbath ; but you cannot vote
the Sabbath-breaker into heaven.
Signed in name and by appointment of the meeting,
WILLIAM COLLINS, Chairman.

our columns. Prom the principles there expressed we
are satisfied the gallant officer will not recede.
That Sir Howard has not before this, according to
our anticipations, appeared personally amongst us,
were informed by the chairman of the meeting, Sir
Thomas Brancker, is to be attributed only to pressing
engagements of a public nature, which have hitherto
detained him in London. The requisition, however,
which will this day be presented to him, will, we have
no doubt, at once bring him amongst us ; and in the
mean time need we call upon the Conservative electors
to be up and doing ? At this moment we are not
aware whether the enemy has any intention of entering
upon so hopeless a speculation as would be a contest
for Liverpool. Our Conservative fellow-to—

however, must not trust too far to the seeming quies
cence of so shifty a set; and we call upon them, there
fore, to unfurl their banner, to rally round it in a;
their strength, and 'to be prepared to strike home a
the first summons of our war-cry--" A DOUGLAS
A DOUGLAS ! "

Sosbrief a period has now to elapse before the open-
ing of parliament will throw a full light upon the
question, that it is scarcely worth while to enter into
an inquiry as to the probable measures or the general
policy of the government of Sir Robert Peel. It may
be useful, however, in order to enable us to estimate
the vast extent of responsibility which attaches at the
present moment to the right honourable baronet and
his colleagues, to glance briefly at the disastrous state
of things which they have to encounter, and for which
the country, distracted by the variety of nostrums
which are eagerly pressed upon its acceptance, looks
up in patient and confiding hope to their sterling ho-
nesty, their admitted talent, and their energetic deter-
mination to provide a remedy.
In whatever direction we turn ourselves, there is
most assuredly nothing in the • prospect to render a
statesman enamoured of the task before him. On
every side are difficulties, vast, complicated, and im-
minent. Abroad and at home, in our colonies, in our
commercial relations, in our financial and in our socia;
system, we see only derangement and impending dan-
ger. From without we are compelled, by numberless
entanglements, to keep up to their full extent our na-
val and military establishments ; whilst, at home, we
have a deficient revenue, the public debt accumulating
upon the shoulders of the people, commerce enfeebled
and shaken with disaster upon disaster, industry laid
prostrate, and famine and misery crowding our streets
with pallid and sinking victims. Bankruptcy and ruin
have compassed the length and breadth of the land,
and have struck down, and are even now striking
down, their thousands of our once wealthy and thriv-
ing classes ; whilst poverty, dogging their path, knocks
at the door of the miserable hovel of the labourer, and
drags the blanket from the bed and the bread from the
lips of his shivering children. The whole fabric of
our past prosperity is shaken to its base; and Eng-
land—once " merry England"—like one whom a burn-
ing fever has racked to the verge of. the grave, lies
powerless, bloodless, and exhausted, where she stood
so lately in her pride of healthful vigour.
To such a state has ten years of Whig legislation
reduced this once happy and flourishing empire. At
the present hour we cannot lay our hand upon one
branch of industry—we cannot point to one class of
our population—and say, " Here is no canker-worm,
no decay, no disease !" There is not in Great
Britain a city or a valley, a mansion, a farm-
stead, or a hut, to which suffering, more or less
intense, has not penetrated. The mechanic, the
agriculturist, the manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the
artisan, and the humble labourer alike languish
under the blight which presuming incapacity has
brought over their homes and their hopes ; and even
CAPITAL itself—the vampire which has lain so long at
the fountain of our national industry and absorbed the
waters which a bountiful Providence intended should
irrigate and fertilize equally the fair face of society—
which has been wont to feed upon toil-worn frames and
wasted limbs—to blanch the cheek of youth and to
paralize the despairing efforts of age—has sunk be-
neath the giant pressure of the times, unable to pursue
further its career of exaction, and compelled even to
lisgorge a portion of its usurious accumulations.
From one extremity to the other we can travel now
;hrough this once smiling land, and exclaim, with per-
'ect truth, that " all is barren"—all is present or inc
?ient desolation

To the correction of such a mass of social disease
and suffering the government of Sir Robert Peel must
at once address itself; and it will readily be admitted
that a task more herculean was scarcely ever presented
to any statesman. That the right honourable baronet
is deeply convinced of the momentous responsibility
which is imposed upon him we know; and it must be
gratifying, as it is flattering, to him to notice, that not
all the efforts of the faction, whose dishonest legisla-
tion has produced the disease, have been able to shake
the nation's confidence in his ability and his honest en-
deavours to effect its cure. The people of Great Bri-
tain look indeed for no miracles at his hands—for no
sudden restoration from a state of suffering and ex-
haustion to one of health and vigour. They anticipate
no resort to legerdemain in his mode of cure. They
wish for no merely temporary, hand-to-mouth legisla-
tion—no mere skinning of the wound; but are con-
tent even to endure the probe and the cautery, in the
hope of at length arriving at a complete and a perma-
nent prosperity.
We certainly do not anticipate that the government
of Sir Robert Peel will attempt to effect this, by taking
up the wild and crude theories put forth, in their last
clutching hours of official life, by the faction which
preceded him in power, however loudly their admirers
may proclaim their drenches and stimulants to be the
only effectual restoratives. The wise physician will
not, we think, adopt the kill-or-cure practice of the
quack who has just been kicked from the bedside of
his exhausted and abused patient. We look for no
measures of free trade in corn, in timber, or in sugar
at his hands; but we do look for liberal commercial le-
gislation, for the healthy developement of the national
industry, and for the protection of that industry—(call
such protection " monopoly " or what you like)—
from every encroachment, from within or from without.
Sir Robert Peel, we know, will carry out to their just
and wise extent, and no further, the principles of
"Free Trade ;" and we can easily afford, even with the
prospect of an election before us, to laugh at the pre
sumption of the incapable faction which, having caught
up in their fall the mere words, without the substance,
of commercial liberality, are content to repeat them as
a shibboleth which, of itself, establishes their exclusive
claim to legislate for a commercial people.
We look with perfect confidence for many importan
ameliorations in our commercial system from Sir Ro.
bert Peel—for many relaxations of the stringency of
our present tariff; but those relaxations, we know, will
be conceded temperately and upon grounds only of
justice and wise policy, and will be such as are calcu-
lated to diffuse their benefits universally, and not to be
absorbed by the manufacturing capitalist and the
scheming speculator. The people of England, amidst
all their sufferings, feel this confidence ; and they can-
not forget that, notwithstanding all their present cla-
mour for free trade, the liberal faction, when in office,
and with a powerful majority at their back, made no
efforts to attain it; and they suspect, moreover, that
that clamour was only at length resorted to when its
parrot-like and senseless iteration was all that was left
them to hide their absolute dearth of practicable and