which await a departure from that strict and rigid observance of
the Sabbath, which they uphold. I cannot help thinking that in
this, as in almost every other respect connected with the subject,
there is a considerable degree of cant, and a very great deal of
wilful blindness. If a man be viciously disposed--and with very
few exceptions, not a man dies by the executioner's hands, who has
not been in one way or other a most abandoned and profligate
character for many years--if a man be viciously disposed, there is
no doubt that he will turn his Sunday to bad account, that he will
take advantage of it, to dissipate with other bad characters as
vile as himself; and that in this way, he may trace his first
yielding to temptation, possibly his first commission of crime, to
an infringement of the Sabbath. But this would be an argument
against any holiday at all. If his holiday had been Wednesday
instead of Sunday, and he had devoted it to the same improper uses,
it would have been productive of the same results. It is too much
to judge of the character of a whole people, by the confessions of
the very worst members of society. It is not fair, to cry down
things which are harmless in themselves, because evil-disposed men
may turn them to bad account. Who ever thought of deprecating the
teaching poor people to write, because some porter in a warehouse
had committed forgery? Or into what man's head did it ever enter,
to prevent the crowding of churches, because it afforded a
temptation for the picking of pockets?

When the Book of Sports, for allowing the peasantry of England to
divert themselves with certain games in the open air, on Sundays,
after evening service, was published by Charles the First, it is
needless to say the English people were comparatively rude and
uncivilised. And yet it is extraordinary to how few excesses it