Sabbath labour, then, my Lord, is a gross violation of the law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”; and I am persuaded that even the misled Spitalfields weavers, and others, when they understand the bearing of the whole subject, have too much humanity and justice about them to wish that workmen employed on the railway should be enslaved on the Sabbath to minister to their pleasure. The operatives of our country generally demand, “JUSTICE FOR ALL, AND FAVOUR TO NONE,” and therefore will hardly desire that one portion of their brethren should be deprived of the rest and comforts of home on the Sunday to enable another portion to indulge in various amusements. This would be to imitate the slave owners, oppressors, and tyrants whom they so loudly denounce, and would prove that, were they in power, they would wield the iron rod of the despot as cruelly as any Pharaoh, Nero, or Russian Czar. The stoker, the clerk, and the porter have bodies and souls. Six days’ toil on a railway, over the same ground and subject to the same monotony of duties, is as fatiguing to them as driving the shuttle or superintending the spindle. There is generally no very great variety of scenery for the clerk who gives out the tickets or the porters who traverse the platform. I have known the poor railway clerk doomed to be at his post from eight in the morning until eleven at night during _all the seven days_ of the week, and all this for a very paltry remuneration. While waiting for a train, some time ago, I had the following dialogue with a young man who filled the office of clerk and porter, and attended to the telegraph:— _Myself_. Are you the only person employed here? _Clerk_. Yes, Sir. _Myself_. Are you here many hours? _Clerk_. I come before seven in the morning and leave about nine at night. _Myself_. Then you have _fourteen_ hours a day? _Clerk_. I have two hours to spare in the middle of the day, when I go home to dinner. _Myself_. Have you to be here the same time on Sundays as weekdays? _Clerk_. Just the same. _Myself_. Can you ever go to a place of worship? _Clerk_. Never, Sir. _Myself_. How long have you been on the line? _Clerk_. Upwards of five years; and have not had an opportunity of going to a place of worship all that time. _Myself_. Did you ever attend church or chapel? _Clerk_. I was brought up in a Sunday School, my parents are members of a Christian Church, and I always attended myself until I was occupied on the railway. _Myself_. What wages do you obtain? _Clerk_. I am paid eighteen shillings a week.