THE "SABBATH IMPIETIES."
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Sm—A great fuss has been made about the refusal of the officials of the Scot- tish Central Railway to forward the Datchess of Sutherland by a Sunday mail- train; and your observations on the circumstance are evidently wanting either in correct information or in your usual candour. The regulations of that railway, rightly or wrongly, prohibit passenger-trains on Sunday. The Secretary, who alone could have exercised any discretionary power, has publicly denied that he was applied to; and the inferior officials were bound to abide by the regulations. The Dutchess might have known, and the attendants ought to have known, that their railway does not ran Sunday trains, because it is so stated in capital letters in the advertisements and in the time-bills. But they ought also to have known that her Grace could have proceeded by another railway from Perth, which does ran passenger Sunday trains. Not having adopted this course, she posted the forty miles by the direct road to Edinburgh, 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, but falsely, inferred that her disappointment was caused by the one hour longer time consumed on the post-road.
You argue justly, that the regulations being so, it would have been improper to grant the request of her Grace merely because she was a Dutchess; and you might have added, that if she had not been a person of distinction the world would have heard nothing of the matter. But the imputation of inconsistency in forwarding the letters while refusing to forward the Dutchess is unfair. The two subjects are not correlatives. The forwarding of Sunday passengers is optional— the forwarding the mails is imperative. For it cannot surely be unknown to you that railway companies are obliged by sot of Parliament to forward the mails on Sunday, but are not obliged to carry passengers. The argument that, because for 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, equally open though less expeditions, the absence of Sunday trains on that railway is "an- tagonistic to morality," could hardly be proposed in earnest. It could easily be shown, that a very prominent effect of Sunday trains on railways is to pour out from the towns crowds of dissolute persons into the quiet villages and hamlets of the country, whose decent inhabitants, trained in the national reverence for the Sabbath, going to or returning from the worship of God, have their moral and reli- gions feelings frequently outraged by the scenes of riot and profligacy too often ex- hibited by these licentious strangers; which surely is more "antagonistic to mo- rality" than the enormity of a Datchess being compelled to alter her intended route. And only look to what the arguing from exceptional cases leads. The person stopped in his journey might have been a Doheny or a MeDowall, proceed- ing to excite an insurrection. You must then, to be consistent, have complained of the interruption as "antagonistic to treason."
[We republished the disclaimer of the Secretary, when it appeared, after our own remarks, founded on the original exaggerated statement; and we hold him to be completely exonerated. As to the distinction drawn by our correspondent between letters and passengers, it does not affect our strictures; because we did not seek to cast blame on the Company in particular, or on anybody else, but merely to show the absurd inconsistency of the system. We cannot admit that keepers of the highways are charged with any peculiar mission to prevent the possible occurrence of offence: if persons are guilty of "riot and profligacy," their cast is one for the interference of the police; but a wholesale prevention of transit to all persons, whether bent on business of necessity or pleasure, business needful, innocent, commendable, or censurable, is a very rude mode of usurping police fimetions: it is worse than 'burning a house to roast a
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