Irttrisfii tYt tiritar.
IRE SUNDAY POST QUESTION.
18th July 1860.
you permit me to refer you to your number of the 20th October 1849, p. 994, in which you recommend "an absolute suspension of Post- office activity for the twenty-four hours between Saturday midnight and Monday morning, making the Sunday literally a dies non." I do this in order to invite you to explain why you are at this time so very decided in your condemnation of every party who may have contributed, actively or passively, in carrying your own recommendation into effect. The plsiu dealing for which you are distinguished leads me to hope you will insert this letter in your next publication ; and that you will favour your subscribers, of whom I am one of twenty years' standing, with the explanation, I hap- pen to know, many of them are curious to see. I have the honour to be [We did not recommend the shutting of the Post-office—we added a sug- gestion to the "several plans for setting labour free on Sunda), " ; a sugges- tion to be tested, of course by the lights of better knowledge and more perfect information than we possessed. That information was subsequently given to the whole country. by Mr. Rowland Hill, in elaborate Minutes of which we abstracted the main results1 in our paper of the 20th April 1850. It satisfied us, that "absolute suspension" could not be accomplished without a greater disturbance of the Poet-office mechanism, and a heavier balance of disadvan- tages to the public, than we were aware of when we hazarded the suggestion of the 20th October, not very accurately quoted against us. Having no care for aught but the truth, we readily yielded our first impression to conviction founded on exact evidence.
As our correspondent speaks for " many " besides himself, we invite him to a repernsal of our paper of the 20th October; which he will find to be elf a larger scope and more catholic spirit than might be inferred from his .qno- tation and statement.
"To live too fast is quite possible in business as well as in pleasure. The Ameri- cans live too fast to digest either their meals, their ideas, or their duties; they go ahead so rapidly that they do not stop to distinguish between right and wrong. or the generous and the mean. In England also we are getting too exclusively devoted to pushing on.' There is a pleasure of the intoxicating lund in rapid motion; but it is in the bodily sensation rather than the mental calculation; and it is enjoyed in a very inferior degree by the passenger in a close railway carriage, to what it LS by.the mariner scudding across the waves in an open sailin,g-boat, though the train will often go four or five times faster than the swiftest viall. There is a convenience in rapid travelling; but not in going too fast for comfort, not in abridging stoppages for refreshment until they become merely stoppages for harassment. The beau ideal of rapidity in such matters is to make the movement fit well into the personal ar- rangements of the day. It is the same with rest-office acceleration : increase in the mere speed of transit is good, if it is general and tolerably uniform; but special ef- forts to attain acceleration in this or that quarter, if it disturbs the uniformity Of arrangements and thrusts upon you a troublesome necessity to take thought about matters so mechanical, is not a self-evident advantage. Post-Mike movements can await the regular evolution of the day or week, without consequences fatal to com- merce or to domestic affections" they are perhaps all the better for fitting into other kinds of periodicity. Several plans for setting labour free on Sunday haste been suggested ; but it appears to us that none is so simple, and so little fruitful in disturbance, as an absolute suspension of Post-office activity for the twenty-four hours between Saturday midnight and Monday morning; making the Sunday lite- rally, what it is called legally, a dies non—as though it were a dream such as might happen between a Monday night and Tuesday morning. " But those who are so strenuously exciting and pushing the agitation to obtain a complete observance of the Sabbath in the matter of letters, will do well to regard sonic other considerations. Of course, if Sunday be wholly freed from Post-office labour, a cognate emancipation will be attained in other things; and there would be the freer field for missionary action in affairs pertaining to religion,—an action to which no one could object so long as it worked by influence and spontaneous accept- ance, not by authority or compulsion. There is a strong reaction against the bare anti-religiomsm of the last two generations; and, in spite of the maladroit Agnew- ites, a 'better observance of the Sabbath' is spontaneously rendered. It bas been remarked in the orderly aspect of the Bethnal Green district on Sundays, and in si- milar signs. The Bethnal Green testimony is not unintelligible; form that quarter the clergy, by a happy combination of personal qualities and local opportunities, have devoted themselves in an uncommon degree to the service of the poor : hence they have wen much personal influence, and the improved observance of the Sabbath is a tribute to that benign power. By such means the Church might extend its influence over the whole island, with the happiest effects.
" Nevertheless, the Sabbatarians are grossly deceived if they expect that the Sun- day, emancipated from labour, would be kept in an ascetic manner. There would its that be the same differences as at present, only more strongly marked. It is not to be denied, that a great portion of the reaction against the anti-religious feeling par- takes in no degree of an orthodox spirit ; and although it now tends to help the movement against labour on the seventh day, it would disappoint the expectation of a weekly fast or mortification. Freed more absolutely from labour, the Sunday would become, to great numbers, more of a holyday—a day of relaxation, of recrea- tion, of vital faculties recruited. The attempt to enforce an ecclesiastical rigour would only provoke a fiercer reaction than any yet witnessed. Religious influences would have fair play and freer scope than they have now, but spiritual dictation would be more strongly counteracted than ever. For stich a consequence the agita- tors of the present movement ought to be fully prepared." In the views of the above paper, surely, there is nothing in common with what we are "at this time so very decided in the condemnation of." From the censure which we heartily bestow on hypocrites and tricksters, we always exempt those who act honestly upon a conscientious opinion, without at. tempting to force the consciences of others. That is not the position of the Queen's Government, or of those abettors in Parliament who equally with the Government disapprove of the complete Sunday suspension, but by their votes, or their skulking absence from the vote, assisted in imposing it. Our suggestion was that of something to be done in good faith, with fitting pre- paration and all appliances to diminish inconvenience and insure succeea Instead of contributing to carry it into effect, the Ministers have avowedly taken a course to defeat the measure ; and for that manceuvre some of the* followers praise them !—ED.]
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