Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
We are no friends to modern miracles. Whether these be wrought at
Trêves, Loretto, or Edinburgh, we protest and make head against them
all; and we care not a farthing for the indignation of the
miracle-monger, be he pope, prelate, priest, potentate, protector, or
provost. The interference of modern town-councils, to which we have
all been long accustomed, has at last reached a point which borders
upon absolute impiety. Not content with poking their fingers into
every civic and terrestrial mess--not satisfied with interfering in
the functions of the superintendent of the city fulzie, and giving
gratuitous and unheeded advice to prime ministers--they have at last
aspired to control the sun, and to regulate the motions of the
heavenly bodies according to their delectable will. Pray, do these
gentlemen ever read their Bibles? Do they really think that they are
so many Joshuas? Do they know what they are doing when they presume to
interfere with the arrangements of Providence and of nature--to alter
times and seasons, and to confound the Sabbath with the week? Our
amazement at their unjustifiable proceedings is only surpassed by our
wonder at the apathy which prevails among the insulted population.
Beyond one or two feeble letters in the newspapers, there have been no
symptoms of resistance. Surely they have some respect left for their
beds and their religion--for their natural and their commanded rest.
It will not do to remain suffering under this last monstrous outrage
in apathy and indifference. The bailies shall not be permitted to
eclipse Phœbus, and proclaim false hours to us with impunity. We
are ready and willing to head a crusade upon this matter, and we call
upon all sorts and sundries of our fellow-citizens to join us in
insurrection against the nuisance.
How stand the facts of the case? Listen and perpend. At twelve of the
night of Saturday the thirteenth day of January, one thousand eight
hundred and forty-eight, the public clocks of the city of Edinburgh
were altered from their actual time by command of the Town Council,
and advanced by twelve minutes and a half. To that extent, therefore,
the clocks were made to lie. They had ceased to be regulated by the
sun, and were put under civic jurisdiction. The amount of the
variation matters little--it is the principle we contend for: at the
same time it is quite clear that, if the magistrates possess this
arbitrary power, they might have extended their reform from minutes to
hours, and forced us, under the most cruel of all possible penalties,
to rise in the depth of winter at a time when nature has desired us to
be in bed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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