"SABBATH IMPIETIES."
TO TILE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Sue—Your correspondent " J. S. H.," who puts himself forward in defence of the Scotch Central Railway Company, for their regulations in general, and for that particular application of them to the Dutchess of Sutherland which has recently produced a public sensation, escaped better than be deserved with the reproof ad ministered in your comment. Neither his tone nor his matter merits forbearance; and as the subject to which this incident has drawn public attention is of great importance to the commercial and social intercourse of the country, I shall beg the favour of sufficient space to deal with the letter of " J. S. IL"
The " great fuss," as he vulgarly phrases it, was simply a very general ex- pression of disgust with what appeared to be a very brutal act. That the ap- parent brutality inculpates no individual,—that it turns out to be the inevitable consequence of a system established by well-meaning, narrow-minded persons who foresaw no such effects,—while it excuses the officials, condemns the system. "J. S. H." taxes you with misinformation or want of candour, because " the Secretary, who could alone exercise a discretionary power, has publicly denied that he was ever applied to." A conclusive justification of the Secretary, cer- tainly; but if he had received and rejected the application, (as was originally and incorrectly stated,) it is plain, from every line of his letter, that "J. S. H." is pre- pared to justify the refusal. From whatever quarter the veto might have come, owever, it obliged the Dutchesa " to post forty miles on the direct road to Edin- burgh, in place of being carried the seventy-five miles by the Central Railway. It is stated that she was too late to see her father alive; and it is invidiously and falsely inferred that her disappointment was caused by the one hour longer time consumed on the post-road.' Does not this writer perceive that, whatever the ac- cidental fact might in this instance be, the difference of time might have been, and might be again, the cause of a " disappointment " which might inflict a sorrow for life? I say nothing of his calculation of the speed of the Scotch Central Rail- way; which, if it can only perform seventy-five miles in the time required for forty miles of posting, holds out no great encouragement to passengers, even on week- days, let alone Sundays.
"You argue justly," continues " J. S. H.," addressing the Spectator, "that the regulation being so, it would have been improper to grant the request merely be- cause she was a Dutchesa; and you might have added, that if she had not been a person of distinction, the world would have heard nothing about the matter." Now Sir, with submission, you did not argue quite justly, and "J. S. IL" has, characteristically, selected the only weak part of your article for his applause. No one will for a moment maintain that the agony of filial feeling which drew forth the bitter tears of the lady in question, as the inexorably nghteous train whirled away its empty carriages, is not as sacred, as deeply entitled to respect and seippathy, in the daughter of the humblest cottager as in the proudest Dotcbess of the land; and no one till lately would have supposed it possible that Puritan rigour would have, under such circumstances, deliberately and with full knowledge of the truth, debarred' the one more than the other from the use of means ready provided to farther the performance of the most solemn act of pious duty. But the knowledge of the truth is difficult in the case of humble and ob- scure persons. The Company would. say that everybody who wanted a Sunday conveyance might urge such a plea; that there could be no means of verifying the story or of identifying the applicant; that they would be liable to perpetual im- position, and their rules to perpetual infringement. But in the case of the Hatch- ets of Sutherland—and here I apprehend lies the distinction—there was no such danger. She was easily identified, and her errand was verified by every news- paper in Great Britain which had announced that Lord Carlisle lay dying at Cas- tle Howard. It is not, therefore, because she was a Datchess that the rule should have been relaxed in her favour, but because no doubt could exist that hers was a honk fide case—that she actually was bunf Lig from the extremity of Scot- land to the deathbed of her father. But "you might have added, that if she had not been a person of distinction, the world would have heard nothing about the matter." No doubt you might, and with perfect truth; but that " J. S. H." should gratuitously remind you of a fact so damna- tory to the system• he volunteers to defend, is a curious specimen of bung- ling candour. His logic is quite as curious. Having just pointed out that a hundred instances similar to that which has lately shocked and revolted public feeling may have °enured, only that the sufferers not being persons of eminence the world knows nothing about the matter, be proceeds immediately to ridicule the charge made against the Company—"'because once since the commencement of the Scottish railways, a person going on Sunday to see a dying parent has been obliged to travel by another route; ; thereby assuming that to be an insu- lated fact, which he has, three lines above, taken the trouble to show may have often happened before. Really these are but sorry dialectics for a gentleman who taunts you in such learned phrase for failing to perceive that certain subjects are not "correlatives."
The conclusion of this production you have dealt with—much too gently: for the Pharisaical arrogance which leads these public carriers to set themselves up for censors of the people's morals, and prompts a clumsy advocate, while he treats with levity the outraged feelings of a. lady of great station, to an explosion of maudlin cant against the Sunday recreations of the poor, richly deserve the lash which no hand can wield with more wholesome efficacy than your own.
Parliament will, according to present appearances, be called upon in its next session to legislate afresh for the main lines of English railway. It will do well to extend the compulsory clause which secures the carriage of letters by these Northern lines to the conveyance of passengers; and it will render a good service to sober and rational Christianity by curbing the headlong zeal of these formalists, With whom it is unlawful to heal a wounded spirit on the Sabbath-day,—re- lieving them from the invidious functions of an amateur police, and silencing their
over-nghteout scruples by its imperial fiat. R. S..
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