England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Sunday
With one exception, there are perhaps no clauses in the whole bill, so
strongly illustrative of its partial operation, and the intention of its
framer, as those which relate to travelling on Sunday. Penalties of ten,
twenty, and thirty pounds, are mercilessly imposed upon coach proprietors
who shall run their coaches on the Sabbath; one, two, and ten pounds upon
those who hire, or let to hire, horses and carriages upon the Lord’s day,
but not one syllable about those who have no necessity to hire, because
they have carriages and horses of their own; not one word of a penalty on
liveried coachmen and footmen. The whole of the saintly venom is
directed against the hired cabriolet, the humble fly, or the rumbling
hackney-coach, which enables a man of the poorer class to escape for a
few hours from the smoke and dirt, in the midst of which he has been
confined throughout the week: while the escutcheoned carriage and the
dashing cab, may whirl their wealthy owners to Sunday feasts and private
oratorios, setting constables, informers, and penalties, at defiance.
Again, in the description of the places of public resort which it is
rendered criminal to attend on Sunday, there are no words comprising a
very fashionable promenade. Public discussions, public debates, public
lectures and speeches, are cautiously guarded against; for it is by their
means that the people become enlightened enough to deride the last
efforts of bigotry and superstition. There is a stringent provision for
punishing the poor man who spends an hour in a news-room, but there is
nothing to prevent the rich one from lounging away the day in the
Zoological Gardens.
There is, in four words, a mock proviso, which affects to forbid
travelling ‘with any animal’ on the Lord’s day. This, however, is
revoked, as relates to the rich man, by a subsequent provision. We have
then a penalty of not less than fifty, nor more than one hundred pounds,
upon any person participating in the control, or having the command of
any vessel which shall commence her voyage on the Lord’s day, should the
wind prove favourable. The next time this bill is brought forward (which
will no doubt be at an early period of the next session of Parliament)
perhaps it will be better to amend this clause by declaring, that from
and after the passing of the act, it shall be deemed unlawful for the
wind to blow at all upon the Sabbath. It would remove a great deal of
temptation from the owners and captains of vessels.
The reader is now in possession of the principal enacting clauses of Sir
Andrew Agnew’s bill, with the exception of one, for preventing the
killing or taking of ‘_fish_, _or other wild animals_,’ and the ordinary
provisions which are inserted for form’s sake in all acts of Parliament.
I now beg his attention to the clauses of exemption.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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