The Sun. — 1840-01-06 (London, England)

PARLIAMENT RELIGION.—The Magistrates and the Police are busily engaged at present in making the Church hateful, and the Sunday an abomination to Englishmen. They shut up at their pleasure, Temple Bar and every other thoroughfare where a church stands in the way—in every hotel and tavern, however well conducted, they proclaim on the advent of that day which was intended as a day of gladness and rejoicing 'for every Christian, that it shall be a day of gloom and sadness—a day of pains and penalties ;on the Sabbath the police become eves droppers, spies, and informers. This sacred day is associated with the terrors of the law—with police-officers and gaols ; on all others but this we may eat, and drink, and drive, and go to bed as we please. To the caprice of a small and meddling sect, all rational enjoyment and healthy exercise are sacrificed. Individual liberty is treated with contempt, and the great law of the Founder of our religion reversed. These impious Pharisees say, " man was made for the Subbath." In the hope that these blind leaders may yet see what incalculable mischief they are doing to true religion, we direct their attention to the following truths, delivered by an acute observer of mankind and a good Christian, the Rev. Sydney Smith :—" You may drag men into the church by main force, and prosecute them for buying a pot of beer, and cut them off from the enjoyment of a leg of mutton ; and you may do all this, till you make the common people hate Sunday, and the clergy, and religion, and everything which relates to such subjects. There are many crimes, indeed, where persuasion cannot be waited for, and where the untaught feelings of all men go along with the violence of the law. A robber and a murderer must be knocked on the head like mad dogs ; but we have no great opinion of the possibility of indicting men into piety, or of calling in the Quarter-Sesions to the aid of religion. You may produce outward conformity by these means ; but you are so far from producing (the only thing worth producing) the inward feeling, that you incur a great risk of giving birth to a totally opposite sentiment. * * To compel men to go to church under a penalty, appears to us to be absolutely absurd. The bitterest enemy of religion will necessarily be that person who is driven to a compliance with its outward ceremonies, by informers and Justices of the Peace. In the same manner, any constable who hears another swear an oath, has a right to seize him, and carry him before a Magistrate, where he is to be fined so much for each execration. It is impossible to carry such' laws into execution ; and it is lucky that it is impossible—for their execution would create an infinitely greater evil than it attempted to remedy. The common sense, and common feeling of mankind, if left to themselves, would silently repeal such laws ; and it is one of the evils of these societies, that they render absurdity eternal, and ignorance indestructible. Do not let us be misunderstood ; upon the object to be accomplished, there can be but one opinion ;—it is only upon the means employed, that there can be the slightest difference of sentiment. To go to church is a duty of the greatest possible importance ; and en the blasphemy and vulgarity of swearing, there can- be but one opinion. But such duties are not the objects of legislation ; they must be left to the general state of public sentiment; which sentiment must be influenced by example, by the exertions of the pulpit and the press, and, above all, by education. The fear of God can never be taught by constables, nor the pleasures of religion be learnt from a common informer."