SA.BBIT If OBSERVANCE: GLASGOW DRUNKENNESS. Glasgow, 27th May 1854. Sin—Your
prolific and versatile correspondent Mr. Bridges Adams has fallen into the mistake so common with many Englishmen, and indeed with pseudo-Scotsmen nearer home, of attributing to this city a character so ex- clusively preeminent in intemperance and its kindred vices, as that on all occasions it may be referred to as furnishing the type of existing social de- gradation ; and of which Mr. Adams gives an illustration or two in his re- cent letter to the Spectator on the opening of the Crystal Palace at Syden- ham on Sundays. if a Londoner supposes us to be so sunk in drunken apathy that any one may with impunity say what he chooses of our social state, there is no help for it. Still, if English habits and manners be not quite immaculate, it might, I think, be possible to find correctives for them without the trouble and risk of travelling so far North of the Tweed ; and it might at least have been expected that your correspondent, being in want of arguments, he would first have looked for them where they may be had in such profusion—namely, at his own door. It is sufficient to point to the prevalence, in the Metropolis especially, of that callous atrocity and brutal outrage the almost daily reports of which fill the whole empire with disgust, and in comparison with which Irish crime is thrown into the shade, and Scottish immorality altogether disappears : and that such depravity is inti- mately allied with and chiefly maintained by intemperance, is so obvious as not to require proof.
But if the allusion your correspondent has made to Glasgow is gratuitous, the use he has made of it seems to me to have been as unfortunate. In combating the obiection to the opening of the Crystal Palace on Sunday, viz. that in collecting great masses of people together incitement is given to lada/gence and debauchery, while he denies that such would be the result in the case in hand, he strangely enough points to the alleged fact, that the people of Glasgow, assembling in the churches on Sabbath, retire "one by one" to low haunts, to indulge in the debauchery of whisky Now, unless your correspondent means to contrast the tendency olirfil:blkl observance here with what he would have it to be at Sydenham, his allega- tion, if good for anything, is for proving the truth of the objection he aims to set aside. But indeed it signifies little what he means, his so-called fact being simply nonsense, and his premises unfit to sustain any conclusion what- ever. Strange, that so wise a man should require to be told that the debased habits to which he refers are those of persons the great majority of whom never enter a church-door ; of persons so dead to a sense of anything de- serving the name of enjoyment, that it would be an achievement alike diffi- cult and laudable to have them transformed even into Sunday pleasure-seek- ers. Such persons are, it must be confessed, easy enough of detection in Glas- gow, as elsewhere, by i any one who likes to search for them ; certainly,
than how- ever, not more so n the alleys and back-slums of London, although your correspondent finds it to be a task easier still to sit in his study and give the reins to his imagination, as he has done in the instance under con- sideration.
In following up his remarks, your correspondent expresses his gratification that there exists no law compelling the Londoner to stay at home on Sunday, as if there did, the degradation of the city would be certain, down even to the "reeking abominations" of Glasgow. There are persons to be met with deprived altogether of the sense of smell ; but it is singular to find one labour- ing under a similar deprivation as to what is going on under his nose, while he professes to have such a keen perception of what is passing four hundred miles away. But what miserable slaves must your correspondent consider us, the citizens of Glasgow, to be ! Does he imagine that the avenues from the city are closed and guarded on Sunday, the alternative being, that we must go either to church or to the public-house ? I am aware that it is com- mon to ascribe the Sabbath dissipation of Scottish towns to a want of facilities for locomotion on that day, by which many are thrown back upon more ques- tionable modes of passing the time. It is not necessary absolutely to deny this; still no Christian man could candidly be expected to sanction a course which, instead of reviving in the minds of his fellow-citizens the dormant ideas of rest and repose and sacredness on the Sabbath, would merely trans- fer them from one phase of dissipation to another. And it will not be de- nied, that if even such means of conveyance were provided, they would not be taken advantage of by a tithe of the class for whose welfare a concern is professed ; and that if even they were invited and encouraged to go—which they certainly would not—they would carry their habits along with them, thus scandalizing the country without doing much good to the town. In former times, the religious observance of the Sabbath in Scotland used to be even more strict than it is now ; and, in connexion with this, the morality of the people stood high. If, in the general decline of manners, that mo- rality has deteriorated, the cause must be sought otherwise than in those very observances which are admitted to have had such a guiding and re- straining influence, and which at the present day unfortunately influence very many so little in the way either of persuasion or coercion.
As to a remedy for all this, that it is to be found in your correspondent's beau ideal of Sabbath observance as that is developed in his letter, appears to me to be highly questionable. This seems to consist in encouraging con- gregated masses of the people to luxuriate amid the productions of nature and the works of art ; and which as a substitute for religious worship, in the ordinary acceptation of the terms, appears to tend towards idolatry, in exchanging the worship of the Creator for that of the works of His hand or the handiwork of the creature. I do not deny, indeed, that there is a certain consistency in all this, although, I dare say, many will admit, more with things as they are than as they should be. With very many more, the professed desideratum is a religion composed of the worship of various idols,—of imagination, of feeling, of art, of anything rather than the re- cognition of an Omniscient Witness and future Judge. In accordance with the sentiments of your correspondent all such persons will of course chime
: and yet we dare not place Mr. Adams in the same category, seeing that he recommends churches to be built in the vicinity of the Crystal Palace ; although, if these are to be used otherwise than merely as lecture-rooms of the principal institution, and if the tendency of the doctrines therein to be inculcated is in any way to resemble what he points out as the result of church-going in this city, your correspondent can scarcely be considered serious in his recommendation.
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