We have always said that on a question like the
Sunday closing of public-houses, the local opinion of a country ought to have the greatest weight; for it is a case in which the grievance either way,— whether in imposing a prohibitive law, or in refusing it,—depends on the customs of the country, and in which the customs of the country depend in great measure on the wishes and tastes of the in- habitants. But assuredly in Wednesday's debate a great deal of evidence was brought to prove that, in Ireland, Sunday is not the drinking-day, but the day on which there is, already, much less drunkenness than on any other ; and further, that Irish constitu- encies do not care for the Sunday-closing measure, but return at the head of the poll Members notoriously opposed to it, even when the Sunday Closing League have pressed the matter most vehemently on those constituencies. Both classes of facts,—those showing how much fewer are the Sunday committals for drunken- ness than those for any other day in Ireland, and those showing the complete indifference, not to say hostility of the larger Irish constituencies, to the proposal,—made, naturally enough, a great impression on the House ; and when on Wednesday the discussion came to an end without any advance in the Committee being achieved, the feeling of the House of Commons was apparently one of relief.
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