to move the heart of woman in America to feel for her coloured brethren
and sisters in bondage, we, who boast of being quite free from all the
prejudices of colour, wish to doom our own fellow countrymen to the
slavery of the rail and Crystal Palace, and then “thank God that we are
not as other men are,” nor even as those vile Americans!! Is it any
wonder that Brother Jonathan laughs at our philanthropy, or tauntingly
retorts, “Physician, heal thyself!” The most complete specimen of
religious grimace and morbid sentimentalism is to see an Englishman or
Englishwoman alternately shedding tears, or burning with indignation over
the fetters of a negro on the other side of the Atlantic, and yet, at the
same moment, condemning his own free born brethren and fellow citizens to
the murderous slavery of the rail, because it will add to the pelf of
some and minister to the pleasure of others! Talk, indeed, of Judas
being dead; why, Mr. Mayhew, kissing the mob in order that he may induce
them first to doom their brethren and then themselves to all the fatal
consequences of Sabbath labour and Sabbath dissipation, is a sufficient
proof that the spirit of the arch traitor is still living among us!
We have of late been very fond of commissions and commissioners. It has
been quite a money speculation. We first create an evil and then employ
men to inquire into the extent of the mischief. We have sent into the
factories, the mines, and the agricultural districts, and children have
been expected to answer questions in religion which would have puzzled
not a few of our Lords temporal and spiritual; but let our present
Sabbath railway system continue, let the Sydenham grounds be open, and
other modes of Sabbath slavery be adopted, and we shall soon want a
Committee of the House of Commons, and a host of commissioners to inquire
into the disease, insanity, crime, ignorance, premature deaths, and
frequent accidents connected with railways. It is well known that the
late catastrophe on the North-Western line near Oxford, by which six
lives were sacrificed, was mainly owing to the immoral character of the
driver. This man, with several other drivers and firemen, was drinking
and carousing the night before. His wife, the _Daily News_ tells us, had
only the day preceding the fatal collision been obliged to flee and take
refuge in a neighbour’s house from his violence; and when he mounted the
engine, with which he hurried himself so recklessly into destruction, and
involved others in his ruin, he had just come from a pothouse, and was
under the maddening influence of liquor. It has been my lot, when
waiting for night trains, to have to stay for a considerable time in
station houses and elsewhere, and there listen to the conversation of
drivers, firemen, porters, and others; and the profanity and obscenity
would hardly have been surpassed by pagans. And is it any wonder, seeing
Sabbath breaking, in many cases, must be an essential trait in the
character of the servants of our different railway companies?
No man who reverences and worships God will break his commandments by
working on the Sabbath, and therefore in a very little time no truly
religious person will have anything to do with railways; and hence it
will come to this, that the lives and property of millions of Her
Majesty’s subjects will be entrusted to Sabbath breakers who neither
“fear God nor regard man.” Formerly we were taught that Sabbath
desecration led to every vice; but now, forsooth, all kinds of good are
to flow from the transgression of the command of the King of Kings, and
the whole community is to be placed, to a great extent, at the mercy of
those who are prohibited by their masters from having any mercy on
themselves.
Volumes upon volumes of facts, my Lord, might be written to show that
without a Sabbath you cannot have a _healthy_ or _moral_ population. And
surely I need not spend any time to prove that _health_ and _morality_
are essential to national prosperity and greatness. People destitute of
health cannot be strong and enterprising; and citizens without good
morals will bring themselves to ruin by their own vices. Hence the
Sabbath was divinely instituted to preserve both. The rest was intended
for the invigoration of the body; and the leisure for religious tuition,
study, and worship was ordained for the moral edification of the soul;
and therefore if you grant royal charters for Sabbath labour, you will
shorten the days of the workpeople, and at the same time deprive their
minds of the means of religious improvement. On God’s own day you lock
up or chain the man from the sanctuary, and then on the week-day you lock
the sanctuary from the man! For the sake of Mammon and the Moloch of
pleasure, you slay men’s bodies and ruin their souls. Whole hecatombs of
human victims are to be immolated for the purpose of increasing the
dividends of railway speculators, and gratifying those who delight in
Sabbath desecration and in trampling the laws of God under their feet.
Wealth is of course valuable, and pleasure desirable, but no one has a
right to obtain either of these blessings at the expense of his brother
man. Money gained at the risk of the health or life of but a single
servant or operative is the price of blood; and that cup of pleasure will
end in the bitterest sorrow which was procured by violating the divine
injunction, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
You are therefore, my Lord, on the plain principles of humanity, called
upon to use your influence that the grounds of the Crystal Palace shall
not be opened on the Sabbath. Though you rejected revelation; though you
supposed the moral law abolished; though you believed that human senators
are prohibited from legislating on any subject on which Jehovah has given
a law; yet it would then be your duty to exert yourself to prevent Sunday
trading and labour. All persons admit that life and property are proper
objects for political laws. Hence you have various sanitary regulations.
There are laws respecting public nuisances, drainage, and common sewers:
you have statutes prohibiting the keeping of pigs and other animals in
cities and towns: you have enactments concerning public houses, gin
palaces, putrescent fish and vegetables: you have penalties to protect
persons from dangerous footpaths, machinery, and poisonous gases; murder
and theft are punishable by law; and neither parents, masters, nor
mistresses are allowed to maltreat their children, servants, or
dependents. If I mistake not, I was in the House of Commons, when I
heard your Lordship advocate the Factory Act; and you have the Ten Hours
Bill and laws respecting the labour of women and children in mines and
factories: the sale of intoxicating liquors in the Crystal Palace was
forbidden; and ale houses are closed until noon on the Lord’s-day; and we
have reason to believe that your Lordship approves of all these
enactments. And we presume that you do so because all of them, either
directly or indirectly, involve the preservation of the health, lives or
property of Her Majesty’s subjects. And now, my Lord, upon the very same
grounds and reasons we call upon you to interfere in the case of the
Sydenham Palace. We know, and you, my Lord, know full well, that higher
motives might be urged; but we now pass these by, and simply plead, that
the opening of the said pleasure gardens on the Lord’s-day, in
consequence of the Sabbath labour that would be attended therewith, would
be an infraction of the natural rights of many of your neighbours and
fellow citizens, and therefore ought to be prohibited by law.
It is now demonstrated beyond all controversy that man’s body wants rest
at the end of every six days. History and physiology, independent of
religion, assure us of this fact. If you deny to the horse, the ox, the
ass, or the man the rest of the Sabbath, you kill him before his time;
and consequently on the same principle of humanity on which you passed
“_The Ten Hours Bill_,” and uphold laws against murder, we call on you to
defend the clerks, porters, drivers, and other servants of the Sydenham
speculators from the evils of Sabbath occupation. It is said by some
that we are a godless age; and by others that we are a most enlightened
and religious generation; and somehow or other both these classes
coalesce to crush the poor labourer and shorten his life by robbing him
of his Sunday. The godless people beg us not to be so fanatical as to
make any law on any subject on which Jehovah has legislated; and the
enlightened and hyper-religious entreat us not to sanction any statute
respecting the right of the labourer to rest from toil on the seventh
day, because it is a religious question!! You may make a “_Ten Hours
Bill_” because it is not mentioned in the Bible; you may even enact a law
against murder and theft, although both are mentioned in the Word of God;
but alas! alas! to make a law to save the poor tired, worn out, weary,
oppressed operative or clerk from being injured by Sabbath labour, would
be to un-Protestant yourself and prove that you do not understand
religious liberty!! As if religious liberty consisted in the liberty to
kill our brethren and sisters by continuous labour!! If there had been
no Fourth Commandment, given by God himself, we should have heard nothing
about this matter. There was no Fourth Command about the “_Ten Hours
Bill_” and therefore it passed; but now our poor operatives and peasants
are to be robbed of their rights and burdened with over work, because
their heavenly Father has said, “Remember the rest-day to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh is the
Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt do no manner of work,” &c.
Therefore, as Jehovah has said we shall do “no manner of work,” you, my
Lord, propose that a royal charter shall be given to railway directors to
enable them to exact labour from their servants on the “Lord’s-day.” Who
can after this doubt our piety, our enlightenment, our staunch
Protestantism, or our love to religious liberty?
These are some of the blessings which we are told belong to Christian
freedom, and the Gospel dispensation! If our overworked mechanics,
operatives, and labourers lived under the darkness and bondage of the
Mosaic law, then, poor souls! they might have a good week’s wages for
_six_ days’ work, and have one day in seven to rest, recruit their
strength, enjoy their homes, bless their families, and improve their
minds and morals; but seeing they live in an age of Gospel light, they
are to be blessed with _seven_ days’ hard work, no rest from toil, no
leisure day to taste the sweetness of home and train themselves and their
families for this world and that to come! It will require no common
sophistry to persuade the simple minds of the masses that it is an
overwhelming privilege, to work _seven_ days instead of _six_, and often
without any increase of wages! Many of them will wish they were Jews,
and that the law of Moses was still in force, that they might rest one
day in seven, and enjoy the sweets of home and the blessings of religious
worship and instruction.
Then how absurd to suppose that we must not legislate concerning the
Sabbath, because Jehovah has legislated on it! And yet we legislate on
murder, theft, &c., although both these crimes are forbidden in the
decalogue. Is this because there are no Sydenham speculators in the way
of observing these commands? But if we legislate concerning the right of
the labourer to rest on the Sabbath, we shall prevent certain gentlemen
from robbing the poor to enrich themselves, and from shortening the lives
of one body of citizens to increase the profits of another. Of course it
would be vastly inconvenient to give every one license to rob, steal, and
take away life; but forsooth, the case is much changed when, instead of
licensing all to plunder and destroy, you make a monopoly of the
business, and grant to Crystal Palace adventurers the privilege of
defrauding their servants of one day in seven, of corrupting the morals
of their fellow citizens, and shortening their days by oppressive toil.
There is a tribunal before which Lords and Commons, employers and
employed must appear, and before which a director has lately been
suddenly summoned. There, my Lord, the highwayman who robbed with the
pistol, and the noble or squire who more genteelly, with an Act of
Parliament, or royal charter, plundered the labourer of one day in seven,
will be placed in the same company and indicted for the same offence; and
where also those who destroyed their brethren more speedily by prussic
acid; and those who did it more slowly, but not less cruelly, by hard and
continuous labour, will be ranked with Cain and his fraternity. Nor will
it be any mitigation of their crime to plead that they would have granted
“A SEVENTH DAY BILL” as well as “A TEN HOURS BILL,” if it had not been
that the Bible forbad Sabbath labour. But as the Universal Father out of
pure love to his children commanded that labour should not be exacted on
the seventh day, therefore it behoved human legislators to countenance
Sunday occupations, lest by following the dictates of heaven, of justice
and humanity, they should violate the principles of religious liberty!!!
How many persons will be employed every Sabbath on the Sydenham Railway
and in the gardens we cannot tell, nor need we trouble to inquire,
because it is too much to sacrifice the liberties, rights, health and
life of but ONE INDIVIDUAL. Were the French, the Russians, or the Turks
wantonly to kill but _one_ Englishman, we should demand satisfaction.
And shall we allow ourselves to plunder and destroy our poor brethren
because we hope to enrich a few speculators thereby? Granted that the
pleasure of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand may be obtained by such
cruelty, yet the amusement and recreation of millions is but as the small
dust of the balance when weighed against the rights and the life of but
ONE labourer or operative. But, my Lord, the mischief will not be
confined to _one_, or _two_. We are told that the working of the Sunday
train from Edinburgh to Glasgow compels at least one hundred persons to
break the Sabbath. Probably quite as many will be required for the
Sydenham business; and therefore the sacrifice of human comfort, rights,
health and life will be very great.
And it must be remembered that but few of the men and women employed will
have time to enter a place of worship on the former part of the
Lord’s-day. Granted that the visitors to the grounds may very devoutly
go to church and pay their devotions to the Eternal before they hasten to
break his Sabbath!! yet firemen, porters, waiters, &c., will hardly have
time to repair to the sanctuary before they put the engines, &c., in
readiness for their masters’ customers; so that the majority of these
railway servants will be deprived of the opportunity of worshipping God
and learning their duty. Here then, my Lord, will be robbery and cruelty
of the worst kind, and therefore we call on you as a man to interfere
between the oppressor and the oppressed. If you never went to church,
and prayed that God would have mercy upon you and “incline your heart to
keep the Fourth Commandment”; if you disbelieved revelation altogether;
if you were a Jew, Turk, infidel, or the most ultra dissenter, yet then
we would appeal to your humanity and entreat you to interpose the shield
of the law and protect the servants of the Sydenham directors, and indeed
all labourers, from being robbed and destroyed by Sabbath occupations.
The question then, my Lord, is a _physical_ one, and just as much within
the range of parliamentary prohibition as any other which involves the
property and lives of Her Majesty’s subjects. There is not a law in the
statute book more just or humane than the enactments against Sabbath
labour. The poor man has as equitable a claim to rest for twenty-four
hours, every seventh day, as he has to sleep, to food, or protection from
the thief and the assassin. Sunday is his own property, and no other day
can now be substituted in its place. His physical frame demands it, and
must be injured if deprived of its refreshing repose; and his family and
home must be rendered desolate if robbed of the presence and smile of its
husband, father, instructor and companion. We pity the orphan and the
widow, but Sunday labour deprives the mother and her children of their
best friend for months and years in succession. It is true he may come
home every night, but then it is generally when his little ones are in
bed, and he leaves in the morning before they are up; and should he visit
his house during the day, in many cases they are at work, or at school.
You cannot, my Lord, give another day that will be a compensation for the
loss of the Sunday. Should our railway directors resolve to grant their
servants a day every week as a substitute for the Sabbath, still the
exchange would not be an equivalent. On the Sunday the whole family
rests from labour; all the members are at home; the house is nicely
cleaned; wife and children are dressed in their best, and all their
resources of domestic happiness are at hand. These blessings cannot be
had on the Monday, Tuesday, or any other day of the week. On the Sabbath
the labourer is as free from toil and care as the nobleman, the prince,
or the monarch; and this weekly leisure and independence are enjoyed by
all his family. The whole community also has an opportunity of
participating in these comforts, so that the people sympathize with each
other in their rest from work, and the endearments of home which are thus
elicited and cherished. Very great also are the intellectual, moral, and
religious privileges of the Sabbath. But these physical, social and
spiritual advantages and pleasures cannot be shared on any other day.
All sorts of occupations will call the various members of the family from
home; instead of the neat and quiet Sabbath appearance of the house,
wife, children, neighbours and friends, all will be bustle and confusion,
and everything will wear the aspect of business, labour and toil. No one
will sympathize with the week-day rest of the railway operative. His
wife is in her every day garb, and perhaps obliged to leave home to
follow her calling. Did he rest on the ordinary Sabbath, he would enjoy
it along with others; but by the unjust arrangement which makes his
Sunday a week-day, and his week-day a Sunday, he has to work when others
are free from toil; and when he has a period of repose, others are at
work; and the noise and labour with which he is surrounded prevent him
from having that rest and social enjoyment which he might share with his
friends and relatives on the general Sabbath. And then most of the
sanctuaries are closed, and thus he is as much shut up from the means of
salvation as if he were transported to some heathen land.
You are therefore, my Lord, about to inflict incalculable evils and
injuries upon a large portion of the most valuable of your fellow
citizens. The working classes are very important members of the
commonwealth. We cannot all be kings and queens; and trade, commerce,
agriculture, manufactures, railways and domestic life, would be in a very
pitiable condition if all were lords, squires, great capitalists, and
Crystal Palace speculators. Our clerks, operatives, peasants, hard
handed fustain jackets, smock frocks, &c., make the wealth and the
comforts of the nation.
“Princes and peers may flourish or may fade—
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
If once destroyed, can never be supplied.”
Thanks to our Sabbaths, Sabbath Schools, Bibles, and Gospel Ministry, we
have in this favoured land of ours, the most industrious, upright,
contented, and moral population under heaven. It may suit speculators in
State Education to malign the working classes, and to exaggerate the
ignorance and vice that may exist among us, but still after making every
just allowance for our intellectual and moral defects, we are prepared to
prove, that there is no country on the globe which can boast of a race of
operatives and peasants equal to the English. And are these the men and
women who are to be robbed of their Sabbaths and the comforts of home?
Is this the return which lords and gentlemen are about to make for their
large revenues and peaceful mansions? It is no use, my Lord, to say that
you only propose to injure, corrupt, and destroy a few, for the benefit
of the many, because the country may have all necessary amusement without
Sabbath desecration and without inflicting an evil on anyone; but if it
could not, you have no right to rob even ONE man of his day of rest, his
health and his home, to increase the wealth or minister to the recreation
of others; and therefore, instead of sanctioning this injustice, it is
the solemn duty of the Government to enact such laws as shall secure to
the labourer full exemption from toil on every seventh day. Works of
absolute necessity and deeds of charity and mercy may be attended to.
All _requisite_ domestic duties may be performed: the sick and the young
may be nursed: the ox and the ass may be led away to watering: or if
either fall into a pit, it may be helped out; but then these occupations
and occurrences will interfere very little with the rest of the Sabbath,
and therefore can bear no comparison with continuous employment on that
sacred day during the whole year.
Should your Lordship, or any of my readers, be doubtful respecting the
physical evils arising from Sabbath labour, I may again refer to the Blue
Book, containing the Parliamentary Evidence respecting Sabbath
occupations. The testimony of the medical men and especially of Dr. Farr
on this point is particularly worthy of notice. I may also quote the
following words of another well known London Physician of long experience
and great practice. The venerable Dr. Conquest of Finsbury Square, in a
letter to the churchwardens of St. Luke’s, says,
“I regret my inability to be at the vestry this evening. Had it been
in my power to be there, I should have endeavoured to prove, as _a
medical man_, that it is _absolutely necessary_ for the _human
constitution_ to have _one day in seven for rest_, because _without
it_, its _powers_ become _enfeebled_ and _impaired_.—_Daily exertion_
and _excitement_ and _fatigue_ during the week, without this one
day’s rest, _prematurely break down_ the _strength_ and _vigour_ of
the _animal system_, _shorten life_, and _deprive old age_ of that
_energy_ and _cheerfulness_ which usually attend it in _those who
have rested from mental and bodily toil on the Lord’s-day_.”
There is not a physiologist or medical man in the country who understands
the physical and metaphysical nature of man, but would subscribe to these
sentiments. Here then you are shown that health, corporeal, mental and
moral energy, and longevity, depend upon the rest of the Sabbath, and
consequently that disease and premature death will arise from Sunday
labour, and yet we are told that we must not legislate on this subject
because it is a religious question. We grant that it is a religious
question, but then it is a physical and social question also. Are not
legislative enactments on murder, theft, on the cholera, factory labour
and poisons, physical and religious questions at the same time? Yea, are
they not religious because they are physical? Is it not a social, a
physical, and a religious duty to preserve life and protect the rights of
the labourer from the injustice of the oppressor? No one has a greater
dread of over legislation, or legislation where conscience is concerned,
than the writer of this Letter, but then who would say that legislating
against murder and robbery must be shunned out of deference to the
consciences of murderers and thieves; or because the duty to avoid these
crimes is a religious duty; and therefore in making any laws respecting
them we should violate the great principles of Religious Liberty, as
though it was a part of Religious Liberty to grant to all sorts of
assassins, plunderers, and speculators, the liberty to defraud and slay
their brethren and dependents? Dr. Conquest, Dr. Farr, and many other
skilful and experienced physiologists have proved, and are prepared to
prove, that Sabbath labour shortens life, and this fact alone renders
legislation on the subject the solemn duty of every humane government,
whether that government consists of pagans, Jews, Turks, infidels, or
Christians.