ever wait for the Pariah, at some inconvenience,
until the hour arrived, and observe
him come to the office in an extremely spruce
condition as to his shirt collar, and do a
little sprinkling of business in a very easy
offhand manner? We have such recollections
ourselves. We have posted and received
letters in most parts of this kingdom on a
Sunday, and we never yet observed the Pariah
to be quite crushed. On the contrary, we
have seen him at church, apparently in the
best health and spirits (notwithstanding an
hour or so of sorting, earlier in the morning),
and we have met him out a-walking with the
young lady to whom he is engaged, and we
have known him meet her again with her
cousin, after the dispatch of the Mails, and
really conduct himself as if he were not
particularly exhausted or afflicted. Indeed,
how could he be so, on Lord Ashley's own
showing ? There is a Saturday before the
Sunday. We are a people indisposed, he says,
to business on a Sunday. More than a million
of people are known, from their petitions, to be
too scrupulous to hear of such a thing. Few
counting-houses or offices are ever opened on
a Sunday. The Merchants and Bankers write
by Saturday night's post. The Sunday night's
post may be presumed to be chiefly limited to
letters of necessity and emergency. Lord
Ashley's whole case would break down, if it
were probable that the Post-Office Pariah had
half as much confinement on Sunday, as the
He-Pariah who opens my Lord's street-door
when any body knocks, or the She-Pariah
who nurses my Lady's baby.

If the London Post-Office be not opened on
a Sunday, says Lord Ashley, why should the
Post-Offices of provincial towns be opened on
a Sunday ? Precisely because the provincial
towns are NOT London, we apprehend. Because
London is the great capital, mart, and business-
centre of the world; because in London there
are hundreds of thousands of people, young
and old, away from their families and friends;
because the stoppage of the Monday's Post
Delivery in London would stop, for many
precious hours, the natural flow of the blood
from every vein and artery in the world to
the heart of the world, and its return from
the heart through all those tributary channels.
Because the broad difference between London
and every other place in England, necessitated
this distinction, and has perpetuated it.

But, to say nothing of petitioners elsewhere,
it seems that two hundred merchants and
bankers in Liverpool "formed themselves
into a committee, to forward the object of
this motion." In the name of all the Pharisees
of Jerusalem, could not the two hundred
merchants and bankers form themselves into
a committee to write or read no business-
letters themselves on a Sunday–––and let the
Post-Office alone? The Government
establishes a monopoly in the Post-Office, and
makes it not only difficult and expensive for
me to send a letter by any other means, but
illegal. What right has any merchant or
banker to stop the course of any letter that I
may have sore necessity to post, or may
choose to post? If any one of the two
hundred merchants and bankers lay at the
point of death, on Sunday, would he desire
his absent child to be written to––the Sunday
Post being yet in existence? And how do
they take upon themselves to tell us that the
Sunday Post is not a " necessity," when they
know, every man of them, every Sunday
morning, that before the clock strikes next,
they and theirs may be visited by any one of
incalculable millions of accidents, to make it
a dire need ? Not a necessity? Is it possible
that these merchants and bankers suppose
there is any Sunday Post, from any large town,
which is not a very agony of necessity to some
one? I might as well say, in my pride of
strength, that a knowledge of bone-setting in
surgeons is not a necessity, because I have
not broken my leg.

There is a Sage of this sort in the House of
Commons. He is of opinion that the Sunday
Police is a necessity, but the Sunday Post is
not. That is to say, in a certain house in
London or Westminster, there are certain
silver spoons, engraved with the family crest
–––a Bigot rampant–––which would be pretty
sure to disappear, on an early Sunday, if there
were no Policemen on duty; whereas the
Sage sees no present probability of his
requiring to write a letter into the country on a
Saturday night–––and, if it should arise, he can
use the Electric Telegraph. Such is the
sordid balance some professing Heathens hold
of their own pounds against other men's
pennies, and their own selfish wants against
those of the community at large! Even the
Member for Birmingham, of all the towns in
England, is afflicted by this selfish blindness,
and, because he is "tired of reading and
answering letters on a Sunday," cannot
conceive the possibility of there being other
people not so situated, to whom the Sunday
Post may, under many circumstances, be an
unspeakable blessing.

The inconsequential nature of Lord Ashley's
positions, cannot be better shown, than by one
brief passage from his speech. "When he
said the transmission of the Mail, he meant
the Mail-bags; he did not propose to interfere
with the passengers." No ? Think again,
Lord Ashley.

When the Honorable Member for Whitened
Sepulchres moves his resolution for the
stoppage of Mail Trains–––in a word, of all Rail-
way travelling–––on Sunday; and when that
Honorable Gentleman talks about the Pariah
clerks who take the money and give the
tickets, the Pariah engine-drivers, the Pariah
stokers, the Pariah porters, the Pariah police
along the line, and the Pariah flys waiting at
the Pariah stations to take the Pariah
passengers, to be attended by Pariah servants at
the Pariah Arms and other Pariah Hotels;
what will Lord Ashley do then? Envy