After recording these transactions, my Journal thus continues:-- "It is impossible to notice all the proceedings of the week, nor is it necessary. The accounts of meetings to protest against the measure, and the gross falsehoods which have been promulgated in order to get up a case, will be found in the _Morning Herald_; ... the real facts appearing in my published minute, and in the statements of Ministers on receiving the deputation of Wednesday." It is remarkable that while the only firm stand against compulsion was made by myself, it was upon me that the blame of this imaginary compulsion was chiefly laid; against me that the most unscrupulous asseverations were uttered, and the bitterest reproaches directed. I had been for a long time earnestly and successfully engaged in reducing the Sunday labour of the department throughout the United Kingdom.[62] Hundreds of persons, through measures adopted on my recommendation, had been released from the greater part of their Sunday duty. I had, in fact, been strenuously, though quietly, doing the very work of the Lord's Day Society; and, now, because a further important measure in the same direction required a small temporary addition to the Sunday force of the London office alone, this even being so arranged as that all engaged would be released from duty an hour before the usual time for the commencement of Divine Service, I was denounced as the chief enemy of the due observance of the Sunday, and charged with a wicked intention to compel, whereas, on the contrary, I was doing my very best to prevent compulsion. These attacks, too, so painful and injurious to myself, were no less endangering the great measure of relief which I was striving to carry through. As I have said, the public could not yet think--it only felt. Under such circumstances I was bound to be most heedful lest any act or even acquiescence on my part, real or apparent, might give, or seem to give, ground, however slight, for just imputation.