(May, 1882.)
Last Sunday the myriads of Paris turned out to the Chantilly races. The
sun shone brilliantly, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Yet there
was no drunkenness or disorder; on the contrary, the multitude behaved
with such decorum, that one English correspondent said it would not have
appeared strange if a bishop had stepped forward in full canonicals to
give them his benediction.
Why cannot Englishmen enjoy their Sunday's leisure like the French?
Because we are still under the bondage of Puritanism; because our
religious dress is nothing but Hebrew Old Clothes; because we follow
Moses instead of Jesus; because we believe that man was made for the
Sabbath, instead of the Sabbath for man; because, in short, there are
in England a lot of sour Christians who play the dog in the manger, and
will neither enjoy themselves on Sunday nor let anyone else. They often
prate about liberty, but they understand it as the Yankee did, who
defined it as the right to do as he pleased and the right to make
everybody else do so too.
Let us all be unhappy on Sunday, is the burden of their song. Now, we
have no objection to their being miserable, if they desire it, on that
or any other day. This is supposed to be a free country; you decide to
be wretched and you select your own time for the treat. But you have
no right to interfere with your neighbors. This, however, is what the
Christians, with their customary "cheek," will insist on doing. They
like going to the church and the public-house on Sunday, and those
establishments are permitted to open; they have no wish to go elsewhere,
and so they keep all other establishments closed. This is mere
impudence. Let them go where they choose, and allow the same freedom to
other people. Those who advocate a free Sunday ask for no favor; they
demand justice. They do not propose to compel any Christian to enter a
museum, a library, or an art gallery; they simply claim the right to go
in themselves.
The denial of that right is a violation of liberty, which every free man
is bound to resent.
This country is said to be civilised. To a certain extent it is, but all
our civilisation has been won against Christianity and its brutal laws.
Our toiling masses, in factory, mine, shop, and counting-house, have one
day of leisure in the week. Rightly considered it is of infinite value.
It is a splendid breathing-time. We cast off the storm and stress of
life, fling aside the fierce passion of gain, and let the spirit of
humanity throb in our pulses and stream from our eyes. Our fellow man
is no longer a rival, but a brother. His gain is not our loss. We enrich
each other by the noble give-and-take of fellowship, and feel what it
really is to _live_. Yet our Christian legislature tries its utmost
to spoil the boon. It cannot prevent us from visiting each other, or
walking as far as our legs will carry us; but almost everything else is
tabooed. Go to church, it says. Millions answer, We are sick of going;
we have heard the same old story until it is unspeakably stale, and many
of the sermons have been so frequently repeated that we suspect they
were bought by the dozen. Then it says, Go to the public-house. But a
huge multitude answer, We don't want to go there either, except for a
minute to quench our thirst; we have no wish for spirituous any more
than spiritual intoxication; we desire some other alternative than
gospel or gin. Then our Christian legislature answers, You are
discontented fools. It crushes down their better aspirations, and
condemns them to a wearisome inactivity.
Go through London, the metropolis of the world, as we call it, on a
Sunday. How utterly dreary it is! The shutters are all up before the gay
shop-windows. You pace mile after mile of streets, with sombre houses
on either hand as though tenanted by the dead. You stand in front of the
British Museum, and it looks as if it had been closed since the date of
the mummies inside. You yearn to walk through its galleries, to gaze on
the relics of antiquity, to inspect the memorials of the dead, to feel
the subtle links that bind together the past and the present and make
one great family of countless generations of men. But you must wander
away disappointed and dejected. You repair to the National Gallery.
You long to behold the masterpieces of art, to have your imagination
quickened and thrilled by the glories of form and color, to look once
more on some favorite picture which touches your nature to its finest
issues. But again you are foiled. You desire to visit a library, full
of books you cannot buy, and there commune with the great minds who have
left their thoughts to posterity. But you are frustrated again. You are
cheated out of your natural right, and treated less like a man than a
dog.
This Christian legislature has much to answer for. Drunkenness is our
great national vice. And how is it to be overcome? Preaching will not do
it. Give Englishmen a chance, furnish them with counter attractions, and
they will abjure intoxication like their continental neighbors. Elevate
their tastes, and they will feel superior to the vulgar temptation of
drink. Every other method has been tried and has failed; this is the
only method that promises success.
Fortunately the Sunday question is growing. Christian tyranny is
evidently doomed. Mr. Howard's motion for the opening of public
museums and art galleries, although defeated, received the support of
eighty-five members of Parliament. That minority will increase again
next year, and in time it will become a majority. Mr. Broadhurst, for
some peculiar reason, voted against it, but we imagine he will some day
repent of his action. The working-classes are fools if they listen to
the idle talk about Sunday labor, with which the Tories and bigots try
to bamboozle them. The opening of public institutions on Sunday would
not necessitate a hundredth part of the labor already employed in
keeping open places of worship, and driving rich people to and fro. All
the nonsense about the thin end of the wedge is simply dust thrown into
their eyes. The very people who vote against Sunday freedom under a
pretence of opposing Sunday labor, keep their own servants at work and
visit the "Zoo" in the afternoon, where they doubtless chuckle over
the credulity of the lower orders. Christian tyranny unites with Tory
oppression to debase and enslave the people. It is time that both were
imperiously stopped. The upper classes wish to keep us ignorant, and
parsons naturally want everybody else's shutters up when they open shop.
We ought to see through the swindle. Let us check their impudence, laugh
at their hypocrisy, and rescue our Sunday from their hands.