Lord Ashley supports his motion by reading some perilous bombast, said to be written by a working man—of whom the intelligent body of working men have no great reason, to our thinking, to be proud—in which there is much about not being robbed of the boon of the day of rest; but, with all Lord Ashley’s indisputably humane and benevolent impulses, we grieve to say we know no robber whom the working man, really desirous to preserve his Sunday, has so much to dread, as Lord Ashley himself. He is weakly lending the influence of his good intentions to a movement which would make that day no day of rest—rest to those who are overwrought, includes recreation, fresh air, change—but a day of mortification and gloom. And this not to one class only, be it understood. This is not a class question. If there be no gentleman of spirit in the House of Commons to remind Lord Ashley that the high-flown nonsense he quoted, concerning labour, is but another form of the stupidest socialist dogma, which seeks to represent that there is only one class of laborers on earth, it is well that the truth should be stated somewhere. And it is, indisputably, that three-fourths of us are laborers who work hard for our living; and that the condition of what we call the working man, has its parallel, at a remove of certain degrees, in almost all professions and pursuits. Running through the middle classes, is a broad deep vein of constant, compulsory, indispensable work. There are innumerable gentlemen, and sons and daughters of gentlemen, constantly at work, who have no more hope of making fortunes in their vocation, than the working man has in his. There are innumerable families in which the day of rest, is the only day out of the seven, where innocent domestic recreations and enjoyments are very feasible. In our mean gentility, which is the cause of so much social mischief, we may try to separate ourselves, as to this question, from the working man; and may very complacently resolve that there is no occasion for his excursion-trains and tea-gardens, because we don’t use them; but we had better not deceive ourselves. It is impossible that we can cramp his means of needful recreation and refreshment, without cramping our own, or basely cheating him. We cannot leave him to the Christian patronage of the Honourable Member for Whitened Sepulchres, and take ourselves off. We cannot restrain him and leave ourselves free. Our Sunday wants are pretty much the same as his, though his are far more easily satisfied; our inclinations and our feelings are pretty much the same; and it will be no less wise than honest in us, the middle classes, not to be Janus-faced about the matter.