The Author of the Reply, with singular inconsistency, has thus disposed of this part of the question. “The Office in London has been considered as uniformly at rest, and always spoken of as such by both parties, the slight exceptions being not of a nature to be cited honestly against that position.” {20c} Slight exceptions! Is this the same hand which penned the ninth axiom? {21a} Twenty-six Post Office clerks, involved in perils such as he has painted, a slight exception, not of a nature to be cited honestly! Why then the twenty-five, or the six, or the gradually vanishing number, of _additional_ clerks required by the new measure? Again, you can see no obvious connection between the additional Sunday labour in London and the additional Sunday rest in the country Offices. Is it fair, you ask, to append to a measure of relief a condition of an opposite kind? You would be the last man in the world, I well know, to impute to me (even as “an elegant close to a period” {21b}) the horrid and impious crime of “striking a balance with Jehovah” by “offering Him a lesser sin instead of a greater.” {21c} You would not call it a sin in one member of a family to endeavour to lighten the Sunday labour of another by the sacrifice of a portion of his own Sunday leisure. You would not call it a violation of the consciences of others, or an exchange of sin for sin, if the Master of a family proposed to his servants such an equalization of their Sunday employments. And on the same principle, if there be any connection between Sunday work in London and Sunday relief in the country, I cannot admit for one moment that it is a sin to propose to a clerk in the London Post Office the discharge of a duty which shall lighten the work elsewhere, not of one, but of tens and perhaps hundreds, of his fellow-servants; and this, without forfeiting for himself the opportunity of attending Divine service twice on the Lord’s Day, with all comfort and quietness, and with leisure, besides, for reflection and repose. {22a} Are domestic servants, to speak generally, even in Christian families, in a more favourable position than this for their religious welfare? The Author of the Reply objects to these “national” views of the question. With him, “national” is the opposite of “scriptural” and “spiritual.” {22b} He can see nothing but the individual; the “one Post Office clerk.” He would deny the applicability to a nation of the command to “bear one another’s burdens.” What in a family would be virtues, in a wider sphere are sins.