be pressed a little warmly, and refused the overture that
he might yield to a stronger embrace.

"Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri."

There were two parties in the house, and the noble lord
was puzzled between them. On the one hand were the
reformers, and on the other the anti-reformers. The
noble lord turned from one to the other, and, like
Captain Macheath, sang:—

    "How happy could I be with either
     Were t' other dear charmer away,—
     But, while you both teaze me together.
     To neither a word will I say."

Though the debate was thus closed, Mr. GRATTAN
addressed the house on the necessity of a reform of the
franchise in Ireland; and Mr. DISRAELI made Mr.
Grattan's speech the occasion for attacking at great
length the views of the reformers. On a division the
motion was negatived by 159 to 100.

Mr. Locke then moved an address to Her Majesty
praying for an inquiry whether the amount of Sunday
Labour in the Post Offices might not be reduced without
completely putting an end to the collection and
delivery of letters, &c., on Sundays; and praying
that, pending such inquiry, Her Majesty would give
orders that the collection and delivery on Sundays shall
be continued as heretofore. He observed that the
government had not received due credit for the extent
of reductions of Sunday labour which they had already
effected in the post-office. Those great reductions,
and others in contemplation, were in the act of being
silently and satisfactorily made, when the house
decided on a total suspension of all Sunday deliveries, in
the vain hope that all labour would be dispensed with
on that day. But there would be no real diminution
in the amount of Sunday labour; and he adduced
evidence that there would be merely a shifting of labour
consequent on the distribution of letters and newspapers
being transferred from the post-office to private hands.
He showed the delay, the losses, and the embarrassments
which the suspension of postal communication on
Sunday would create; and asked why the suspension of
labour should be limited to the post-office. The
measure was a narrow, partial, and indefensible assertion of
a far wider principle. Why did it not comprehend
every public and every private department? Because
the country would not for an instant stand the entirety
of its mischief.—Mr. ROEBUCK seconded the motion,
dividing the question into two distinct questions,
religious and political. With the first the House of
Commons had nothing to do. The Sabbath was unknown
in the Christian religion; and none of the Jewish curses
against a breach of the Sabbath could be directed against
acts done on the Christian Sunday. The great fathers
of the church, from Luther and Calvin downwards, tell
us that Sunday is a "feast-day," having nothing to do
with the Judaical dispensation, but set apart for human
observance by human wisdom, for human purposes, on
human grounds. Turning to the political question, he
admitted the great benefits to man of a day of rest. The
true principle was to afford relief to the greatest number;
but, by interrupting the arrangements of the post-office,
labour would be multiplied five-fold. The post-office,
by its cheap, easy machinery, called for a small
quantity of labour from the poor man; it contributed
to his education and in many ways to his mental and
moral amelioration; and much of its special influence
was exercised on his Sunday of labour. On the ground
of religion, he concluded, there was nothing to stand
upon; on that of political expediency there never was a
grosser blunder than the closing of the post-office on
Sunday.—Lord ASHLEY insisted that the closing
experiment had not had a fair trial; it had been but twenty
days in operation, and nothing had been alleged to
justify a reversal of the decision of the house.—Sir R.
INGLIS opposed the motion, which in his opinion involved
the honour of the sovereign.—Lord J. RUSSELL reminded
the house that the proposition of closing the post-offices
on Sunday did not meet with the support of ministers,
and that they had no option but to present to Her
Majesty the address of the house, which was not like a
simple resolution that might be rescinded the next day.
He could have wished that the question had not come
on again so soon for consideration; though on the
general question, he could not get over the circumstance,
that here was a public department which was charged
with the business of carrying the letters, and armed with
the powers of the state to prevent other persons carrying
them—which took upon itself to be charged exclusively
with this duty—which conveyed a letter on the Saturday
evening from London, informing a daughter that her
father was so dangerously ill that unless she set out
immediately she might never see him again or receive his
blessing; and that letter, arriving in a provincial town
early on the Sunday morning, was there detained
twenty-four hours in the post-office, the daughter
perhaps knowing of the father's illness, and suffering all
the agonies of protracted anxiety during those twenty-
four hours. There was the case of the Duchess of
Sutherland, whose father was dying at Castle Howard;
it was generally thought a very barbarous thing that she
was not permitted to enter the railway carriage to arrive
in time to see her father before his death. The
circumstance attracted great attention owing to the rank of the
two parties concerned; but that circumstance, which
shocked a great many people—preventing a daughter
from seeing her dying parent—we might have repeated
every Sunday. There were poor families, families that
could pay a penny for a letter, but could not send a
telegraphic message or a parcel by the railway; and
this might be occurring in fifty, or a hundred, or three
hundred instances, every time we detained the letters.
He concluded by proposing the omission of the last
clause of the resolution, which suggested a resumption
of Sunday deliveries pending the inquiry. Mr.
GLADSTONE proposed the further omission of the preamble of
the resolution, referring to the great public
inconvenience which had arisen. Lord John RUSSELL
concurred in this proposal; and the resolution, reduced by
those omissions, to a simple prayer for inquiry, was put
as an amendment. The house divided on the original
motion, which was negatived by 233 to 92; and the
amendment was then carried by 195 to 112.

On Wednesday the 10th, Mr. Stuart WORTLEY
moved the third reading of the Marriages Bill, and
Mr. WALPOLE moved its third reading that day three
months.—Some debate ensued, in which there was no
novelty, and the third reading was carried by 144 to 134.
—A motion, by Mr. Oswald, that the bill should not
extend to Scotland, was negatived by 137 to 130.

Mr. EWART brought forward his annual motion for
the Abolition of the Punishment of Death, on Thursday
the 11th. Without entering into the statistics of the
question, he contended, on general grounds, that this
punishment was inconsistent with the great object of
all punishment—certainty—inasmuch as juries often
acquitted the criminal solely through abhorrence of the
penalty. He combatted the objections urged against
him last year by Sir G. Grey, and contended for the
substitution of secondary punishments.—Sir G. GREY
went over the old grounds of opposition to the motion,
which, after being supported by Mr. Bright and Mr.
Adair, was negatived by 46 to 40.—Mr. F. O'CONNOR
then brought forward his motion, that the house should
adopt the principles embodied in the People's Charter,
and was speaking in support of it when the house was
counted out at half-past eight, there being only twenty-
nine members present.

On Friday the 12th, Lord John RUSSELL moved an
address to Her Majesty for a monument in Westminster
Abbey, to the Memory of Sir Robert Peel, with an
inscription expressive of the public sense of so great
and irreparable a loss; and, in doing so, pronounced a
warm eulogy on the character and services of the
departed statesman. The motion, being put by the
speaker, was carried by acclamation.—Mr. HUME moved
an address to her Majesty, praying for a commission to
enquire into the causes of the naval and military
operations on the coast of Borneo, which had caused
a lamentable loss of life among certain of the native
tribes. The debate which ensued turned chiefly on the
conduct of Sir James Brooke, which was severely
censured by the mover, Colonel Thompson, and Mr.
Cobden, and defended by Mr. Plowden, Sir H. Verney,
and Sir F. Baring. The motion was negatived by
169 to 29.