From the time of his 1836 Sunday Under Three Heads (Vol. 1 of [The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], pp. 475–99), Dickens took a strongly anti-Sabbatarian stance. [...] The following article was provoked by the success of Lord Ashley's motion in the House of Common on 30 May (carried by a majority of ninety-three votes to sixty-eight), asking for an Address to the Crown to end all Sunday collections and deliveries of letters throughout the country; the measure was due to come into effect on 23 June. The Postmaster-General, Rowland Hill, had been trying to accommodate Sabbatarian criticisms of Sunday working, but his plans had been misunderstood and also deliberately misrepresented; this resulted in increased pressure from the powerful and energetic Sabbatarian lobby for the total abolition of all Sunday postal services and the success of Ashley's motion (for a full discussion of all this, see Norris Pope, Dickens and Charity [1978], p. 63f.).
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