Blowing of Horns and crying the Papers. 59 be at a loss to determine. We have an attack on the Ministers, as in league against the constitution of the state, which they are bound to preserve inviolate. The Parliament of the country is charged with a criminal design of passing laws "hostile to the fundamental Sta"tutes of the realm;" while all attempts to prevent the Papists and their adherents from obtaining political power (under the fallacious pretext of Catholic emancipation), are characterized as the pretensions of our rulers to control the conscience; and, as a consistent termination of such sedition and sophistry, we are further promised a farrago of "Varieties, “ connecting Taste, Morals, and Politics, with every species of entertainment;" in other words, a sort of Sabbath Salmagundi is provided for every various appetite; so that the politician, and the play-goer, the dabbler in literature, and the pretender to taste, may alike be gratified by the food adapted to his particular palate on that sacred day, when men are invited, by the highest authority, to the worship and service of God; and as solemnly enjoined against "doing their own ways, finding their own pleasure, and speak"ing their own words."

The blowing of horns and the public crying of the newspapers is another mode of

60 Complete Inadequacy of the existing Law. publicity; and it is hardly possible to conceive a greater offence to the feelings of all who retain any reverence for the Sabbath, or any desire of observing it, than arises from this source. In the western part of the town, in particular, this practice has long been carried to a disgraceful extent. It once happened to the writer to make an appeal to the Office of the Home Department, on occasion of this particular nuisance, and every possible disposition was manifested, on the part of its Noble Head, to remedy the grievance in question; but, on reference to the Chief Magistrate of Police, he stated his opinion to be, that, unless the noise should occur in the time of divine service, and be such as to amount to an actual obstruction of it, it was irremediable by any existing law. A considerable difficulty would also arise in obtaining the correct name and residence of the offender, so as to institute any subsequent proceedings; a piece of information which it will be found is almost invariably refused by these erratic violators of the Sabbath.

4. This fact naturally leads to the consideration of the entire inadequacy of the present law, in regard to Sunday Newspapers. On one appeal, which the writer made to a respectable magistrate of long practice, with a

Magistrates cannot safely act at present. 61 view to repress the sale of the Sunday Papers; he expressed himself of opinion, that the statute of Charles II. commonly called the Lord's Day Act, could not reach this offence, because it only contemplated the continued exercise on the Sabbath of the ordinary trade and calling of the week; whereas the act of selling a Sunday Newspaper was not the ordinary trade of the party in question, on the week days, and he was therefore not amenable. On another occasion, the reason given for declining to interfere was, that so old a statute could not contemplate the punishment of such a mode of violating the Sabbath as did not then exist, and therefore that a modern evil (if evil it was) required a modern remedy. In a third instance it was argued, that the fate of the appeal to the Legislature in the year 1798, on the subject of Sunday Newspapers, when it declined to interfere, had virtually sanctioned their continuance, as the Parliament was then made cognizant of the practice, and did not deem it necessary to suppress it; and this argument derives at least a colourable support from the unfortunate appeal of the Newsmen to the Legislature, in the present session; although, as I hope to show hereafter, no conclusions whatever, as to the sense of Parliament upon this question, can fairly or legitimately be drawn from the reception which that appeal has met with.

62

Absolute Necessity of a new Law.

How far the reasons, above alledged, for the magistracy declining to interfere, may or may not be correct, it is not necessary to inquire; but I presume that no fact can be better established, than that no magistrate would feel himself justified in considering this practice as punishable, either under the statute of Charles, or any other existing statute; and, indeed, if any magistrate could be found who might be inclined to convict for this offence, under any of the statutes for the observance of the Sabbath, it may be doubted whether the low amount of the penalties (owing to the great change that has taken place in the value of money) would not effectually stand in the way of any useful result.

The absolute necessity, therefore, of an express law in reference to this offence, if it is ever to be suppressed at all, appears evident; and, indeed, if there were no better proof of the necessity of a distinct declaration upon this subject, on the part of the Legislature, it would be found in the fact, that the practice has now become so interwoven with the habits of a large portion of the population, as to render the custom of taking in a Sunday Paper a kind of artificial want; which, although it might not have been felt originally by many who now pursue the practice, has yet, from

Amount of Revenue considered.

63

long indulgence, acquired a strength which only a declarative and remedial statute can meet. Not only, therefore, does no adequate remedy of this evil now exist; but it appears necessary that those of the public, who are at present without a proper sense of its nature and extent, should be taught that the appointed Guardians of our moral and political security regard the practice in question as calculated to overthrow that security; while they who are already convinced upon the subject, and who (in the language of Scripture) "sigh and cry for "the abominations of the land," may observe in their natural protectors an honourable readiness to redress our moral grievances, and an anxious desire to avert the judgments of God.

5. The question of revenue may be next considered. The whole revenue, derived from the Sunday Newspapers, may be put at an average of 27,000l. per annum; a sum surely of inconsiderable amount when placed in competition with the advantages of being without it. If it could even be proved that this sum were so much clear profit, and that no deductions ought to be made from it on account of the pecuniary outgoings, which are consequent upon the system from which it is derived; it would even then appear, that a tax, which is drawn from such a polluted source, could not