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.