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the more intelligent natives of India , and to insist upon a temporary act enlarging the time for inquiry and deliberation as to the future government of India . These are demands so moderate and so perfectly reasonable that Government must refuse them at its peril . We have reason to believe that Government is not unaware of the risk that it incurs by provoking an opposition of such character . The Society will inevitably be strengthened by the knowledge of the progress which it lias already
made , not only in securing open recruits , but in daunting the most exalted of those persons who thought that they could settle the government of India for ten years to come by an official decree . There have been many proofs of the degree to which Government is dismayed by the spontaneous and growing opposition ; and not the least is the fact , that in the face of that opposition , before it has stated its own measure , it has engaged itself in the task of revising that measure . The measure which would have been advanced
the week before last will never come before Parliament . As Washington covertly recruited his army before the enemy , so Government has been covertly mending its measure before the Opposition . Thus , while it was in the very process of formation , the Indian Reform Society maybe truly said to have gained a victory over the Government ; and we believe that both sides know the victory accomplished and the defeat sustained .
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SABBATHMONGERING . The machinery of public meetings , useful as it is , is evidently capable of great extension as regards the purposes to which it may be applied . Hitherto it has been too much devoted to finding fault with rectors , or administering pressure from without to Governments ; but at length an ingenious pietist and publisher has . discovered that it has a far higher use , and has accordingly converted it into a means of simultaneously advertising himself , and paying a compliment to the Deity . A very disorderly gathering of very religions young shopmen afforded the opportunity
ior the development of this brilliant idea ; and though the reports of the interesting proceedings to which it gave rise are unfortunately scanty , there are yet sufficient evidences that Mr . Seeley ' s conception met the entire approbation of the noisy , but estimable counter-jumpers , who surrounded him . The ostensible object of their gathering was to pass a denunciation on the Crystal Palace , to which they do not want to go , and that they might denounce with effect , they threatened with the divine vengeance , as well as with their personal contempt , all persons , from the directorate to the doorkeeper , connected with that profane institution , and , at the same time ,
to be sufficiently comprehensive , promised the infliction of similar penalties upon everyone who , to gratify his eyes , benefit his health , or improve his mind , should dare to support it . They had amongst them a clergyman , secretary to somo society for the promotion of discomfort and hypocrisy , on what we heathenishly call Sunday , but they , as solemnly as incorrectly , the Sabbath , and from various quarters they received notes of apology , regretting the absence of rich and devout bankers , distinguished merchant princes , and highly salaried saints , who had been asked to lend their countenance to this demonstration
against the growing intelligence of the "working cfassos . The Lord Mayor even , a citizen ana butcher , wo bolievo , was to have joined the worthy chairman in his very pious , but very original tribute to the wisdom of the Divine Lawgiver , and in his very fervent , but very illogical hatred of " lower class" happiness on Sunday ; but laborare est orare ; his lordship was engaged in his civic duties , or would gladly have been with the rest at tho London Tavern to rote his confidence in any or all of the ton commandments . However , they managed without him ; and meagre as arc tho reports , there is no difficulty in making out what took place .
iloflolutions , of course , wore passed , asserting tho intelligent audience's entire agreement , not to say sympathy , with Omniscience ; after which carao motions expressing in fact , though not in terms , a painful hesitation as to tho existence of Omnipotence , and potting over tho difficulty or tho doubt by praying that Parliament would lend its aid towards tho enforcement of tho will of tho Supremo . " I will loose my camel and trust her to God , " said tho weary follower of Mahomofc to his prophet-master j " ( ie b , or and
trust her to God , " said the Seeley of the desert in reply . The fourtli commandment is the camel which the faithful of our day mean to tie . But the insult to the Omnipotent , which seems to us to be implied in this rendering of assistance to Infinite Power , is not , after all , so blasphemous or so base , as that which our degenerate Pharisees , in these cases , always first cast upon Infinite Wisdom . Never , till every social argument has been exhausted , till logic has refuted their reasoning , and ridicule has exposed their pretensions , do they think of appealing to any higher
authority than their own ; it is only at last , when foiled at all points , and convicted on all hands , equally of malice and of folly , that they appeal to Heaven , asserting that Him whom we thought just , they deem arbitrary , and that what sounded , perhaps , like nonsense from their lips , is , in fact , though they did not mention it before , wisdom , derived , by them , from His . In every case it is the same . Let there be a proposition to admit Jews into Parliament ; we are told that they are aliens , that they cannot rest in this country , that their portmanteaux are always packed ready for the return to Jerusalem , and that their whole mode of life unfits them to
become supporters of our constitution . Still we say that Christian electors must be allowed the right to elect ; and then comes the prophecy . What used to be deemed Judas's disgrace , must seem to other theologians , besides the Ex-chancellor of the Exchequer , to have been his eternal glory . He fulfilled a prophecy ! Then there is Stuart Wortley's Bill . A man should not marry his wife ' s sister , say the opponents of that measure . Why ? For reasons innumerable ; which , however tested by sense and by experience , all fail . Here , again , Scripture is appealed to ; and the censorious sanctity which was defeated on all moral , social , and political grounds , as triumphantly as falsely asserts , that if it is irrational , so also is Inspiration I
The Sabbath question has , of course , been dealt with in this way . Sanctified hypocrisy , in tracts , in newspapers , and at meetings , has first appealed to interest , and afterwards to Heaven . Before us , at this moment , is an article , published on September 3 , 1846 , and reprinted from a great and versatile contemporary , assuring the working-classes that if " they are so eager for jaunting , they will be not unreasonably
presumed to be brisk enough for working , and the seventh day will soon be swallowed , like the thirteenth hour , in the gorge of commercial cupidity . " JSTo wonder that the practical atheism , which thinks a temporal evil a stronger motive than the rewards and punishments of the next world , should also think the British Parliament ' s support necessary to tho carrying out of the will of the Deity . Can he believe in a God , who doubts whether that God can take care of
himself P Let Mr . Seeley read Blackstone ; he will there find that sovereignty and legislature are convertible terms ; tliat for a human monarch to make laws which ho could not enforce without Mr . Seeley ' s assistance , would bo tho height of absurdity , and that to attribute—but the worthy chairman must draw his own conclusion . After all , though , tho great mystery to us in these proceedings , is their entire ignoring of tho
advances of religious liberty , on the part of those who oppose us . Mr . Newton and his frionds have carefully avoided offending oven the prejudices of their adversaries , and have kept clear , as far as they could , of the merely dogmatic question altogether ; not so the Bliiil brotherhood , or tho shepherds of that numerous flock . At this very meeting held on Wednesday last , tho Scriptures wore quoted in support of tbo speakers thn wrath to i ! ome was made to back tho terrors
of " tho gorgo of commercial cupidity ; ' and Paloy , of whom , as n theologian those of tho audience who had road him , approved on most points , was pronounced vulnerable —a sort of intellectual Achilles—in one—tho audience agreeing in all else but disagreeing with him in his views about Christian Sabbath observance . But none of thorn went to tho
question . Their rhetoric may have been unexceptionable , but their logic was loose . They talked as if we had King Jainio back again , reissuing tho Book of Sports , and Star-Chambering such of hirt liege Puritans us declined to bo merry on Sunday . They argued as if wo wanted to force them , instead of requesting thorn to let us spend " the Sabbath" as our wilia inclined , or our coHHcionooB dictated ,
Let us concede to them that a Jewish observance is a Christian obligation ; that the Sunday of the Catholic Church is the Sabbath of Sinai ; that the Sabbath of Sinai was meant for the people of London , and that going to the Crystal Palace is an infraction of the Sabbath of Sinai . We come , then , to one of two conclusions . We must take the commandment , per se , as we find it , and conclude that it forbids to each of us this " desecration , " but does not make any of us
responsible , as this meeting seemed to think itself , for the doings of other people ; or we must take it , in conjunction with the Scriptural penalty , inflicted on the Jewish people , for its infringement— " Whosoever doeth any work on the Sabbath , he shall surely be put to death , " and in conjunction with the duties prescribed for that people on that day . As Paley says , " If the command be binding upon Christians , it must be binding as to the day , the duties , and the penalty ; in none of which it is received . " As Mr . Newton
says , and we say , to the speculators in sanctity , " Admitting that it is binding now and for ever —though we get the notion from the Jews , the day from the Catholics , and the duties from the ^ Reformation—we ask you either to inflict the penalty prescribed , if you think yourselves authorised to do that , or to attend to your own duties , and look into your own consciences , if you are not afraid to dp that . The will being as good as the deed , according to the proverb , must we judge be also as bad : so far , therefore , if you are right , we are Sabbath-breakers already . Then as to your petitions to Parliament . The object of Government being the well-being of society , and not the promotion of asceticism , or
even , of religion , legislative interference for the circumscription of our rights can only be excused by good social and temporal reasons shown - —the which , we apprehend , will in this case be found somewhat deficient . There can be no duty where there is no volition , no merit in attention to duty , where there is no free agency as to its performance . Mr . Seeley ' s plan of keeping the world pious may be a good one , but it is not the plan of a wiser than he . Had there been a Parliament in Eden , a Seeley in the neighbourhood , and a London Tavern hard by , pressure from without would have put a guard round the tree of knowledge ; ' agitation' would have defeated the ' serpent : ' human ' resolutions '
would have proved more efficacious for the preservation of the forbidden fruit than divine commands . Strange to say , however , a very different course was adopted , the which , moreover , has been followed up since with consistency through every aj ^ e of the history of the world . Freewill offerings , not forced services , have ever been preferred ; the certainty of a future state , and not a Parliamentary majority , has ever been the inducement held out to a right life in this . "
These really are tbo matters in dispute , and they are matters which the publicans and clergymen , who are getting up this Sabbatarian agitation , should remember . It is too bad that tho rest of tho world should be persecuted because city pew-openers iind themselves involuntarily observing the fourth commandment ; in other words , having nothing to do in the way of their profession on Sundays ; it is still more so that Parliament should be asked to interfere with tho
rights of the community , lest the pot- ) " > ys and tho barmaids of tho metropolis should be thrown out of their Sabbatical employ . Let us emancipate the latter class at once ;—tho clergy have already very nearly succeeded in emancipating tho former ; let us sever this unholy alliance between tho pint pot and the crosier ; let us endeavour at tho same time to give the death blow to this last odious hypocrisy , which looks blandly at aristocratic amusements—at the parks •—and tho clubs—at tho Botanical and at the
Zoological Gardens ; which fawns upon tho seven day ' s idleness of the rich , but impiously pours forth heaven's curses on the Crystal Palace , and spits its filthy venom at the one ( lay ' s needful relaxation of the poor . Lot tho good , the noble , and tho pious strain every nerve till this bculouc . They have-hero a great auiMo ; for the suocoks of hypocrisy is the downfall of religion .
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ANARCHY IN TRADK . Trust to the spirit of intelligent selfishness , and it will Htick at nothing , not oven at death . Commercial men do not scruplo to hazard the life of their customers . They will set tho death of u euHlomor against a little profit , more or loss , a . ud
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March 19 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER , 277
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 19, 1853, page 277, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1978/page/13/
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