iii. And then again, brethren, look at this project as it must encroach cruelly upon the _poor man’s Sabbath rest_. It is a principle I fear but too little understood by our labouring classes, that every step taken in the direction of Sabbath desecration, for purposes of _voluntary_ pleasure, is a step in the same direction for purposes of _compulsory_ work. The principle of sanctity once given up, the day brought down to the level of a respectable church usage, a master may consistently say to his working men, ‘If your conscience is lax enough to take _pleasure_ for your _own_ sake, it surely cannot task it much to do a little _work_ for _mine_.’ And this principle once recognised, that an employer may get out of his workmen a whole or half a day’s more labour than he used to do, competition or cupidity will soon make a corresponding reduction in the rate of wages, until the labouring man finds he gains no more for working _seven_ days, than he formerly did for working _six_. I have the fullest persuasion that many a poor man is spared from _compulsory_ Sabbath labour now, because employers dare not, in the face of an almost universal verdict of society in favour of the sacredness of the day, force a workman’s conscience. But let society once cancel that verdict, let the workman show, by his presence at the Sydenham fair, that he has no conscience to force,—and the master’s shame will soon depart from him, and the labourer who refused to keep his Sabbath rest _holy_, will find, as he deserves to find, that he will have no Sabbath rest at all. Judge ye for yourselves, my humbler brethren, who has most right to be called the POOR MAN’S FRIEND.