Myself. Can you ever go to a place of worship?
Clerk. Never, Sir.
Myself. How long have you been on the line?
Clerk. Upwards of five years; and have not had an opportunity of going to a place of worship all that time.
Myself. Did you ever attend church or chapel?
Clerk. I was brought up in a Sunday School, my parents are members of a Christian Church, and I always attended myself until I was occupied on the railway.
Myself. What wages do you obtain?
Clerk. I am paid eighteen shillings a week.
Here, my Lord, are some facts worthy of your consideration. You have heard a great deal about Millocracy and the cruelties practised in the manufacturing districts. I live among factories and we have “A Ten Hours Bill,” and our operatives leave work at four, some at two, o’clock on Saturday, and have the whole Sabbath to themselves. The wages on an average are quite equal to those of this railway clerk. And yet we are told that these masters are tyrants, oppressors, and care nothing for their workpeople. But if so, what shall we say of the “Railocracy” which is springing up among us? The poor railway operative in a great number of cases has no Saturday afternoon to himself, no Good Friday, no Christmas-day, no Sunday, no holiday throughout the year. He must never attend a place of worship, and in some instances he is prohibited from reading during the hours that he is on the line. Such a monotonous life, though spent on Parnassus, or in the pleasant vale of Tempe, would prove fatal to all physical, intellectual, and moral health. And when we consider that some of the buildings and localities in which these poor fellows are imprisoned are almost as comfortless as an Irish cabin, and far worse than many gaols, we must blush for the system which thus violates all the dictates of humanity and religion. We spend some thousands a year to send missionaries to the heathen, to teach barbarians to keep the Sabbath, but how little do those simple hearted savages dream that, at home, we doom our own Christian brethren to break the Sabbath and become pagans in a land of Bibles and Gospel light, or that we have Lords who wish for royal charters to sanction this cruelty and wickedness!
At the time that our peeresses and other ladies are bestirring themselves to move the heart of woman in America to feel for her coloured brethren and sisters in bondage, we, who boast of being quite free from all the prejudices of colour, wish to doom our own fellow countrymen to the slavery of the rail and Crystal Palace, and then “thank God that we are not as other men are,” nor even as those vile Americans!! Is it any wonder that Brother Jonathan laughs at our philanthropy, or tauntingly retorts, “Physician, heal thyself!” The most complete specimen of religious grimace and morbid sentimentalism is to see an Englishman or Englishwoman alternately shedding tears, or burning with indignation over the fetters of a negro on the other side of the Atlantic, and yet, at the same moment, condemning his own free born brethren and fellow citizens to the murderous slavery of the rail, because it will add to the pelf of some and minister to the pleasure of others! Talk, indeed, of Judas being dead; why, Mr. Mayhew, kissing the mob in order that he may induce them first to doom their brethren and then themselves to all the fatal consequences of Sabbath labour and Sabbath dissipation, is a sufficient proof that the spirit of the arch traitor is still living among us!