A Second Letter on the late Post Office Agitation

by C. J. Vaughan

I believe that a similar examination of other details would establish with equal certainty this connection of cause and effect between the Regulation itself and the beneficial result. But, were it otherwise, is it a reasonable demand that the connection between the different sections of the new Order should be, in every point, capable of mathematical demonstration? Is every complex measure to be stigmatized as a fraud, because its component parts, however perfect their harmony, do not arise out of each other by a logical sequence? Might not even an apparently extraneous appendage (though I am far from regarding this as a just description of any part of the present Regulation) be accepted as at least an indication of the spirit and object of the framer?

There is yet another point, which has left on your mind, as on that of others, an unfavourable impression. The attendance of the additional Clerks on Sunday in the London Post Office is voluntary. In other words, a man whose conscience forbids him to attend on the Sunday shall not forfeit his situation by refusal. Does this imply, on the part of the Government, any mis-giving as to the lawfulness of the duties proposed? It merely recognizes the possibility of such scruples, and extends to them the amplest toleration. That there are men who would think such attendance wrong, is a matter of fact: the Government tolerates, though it does not share, the opinion, and would prevent its operating harshly upon the fortunes of the conscientious recusant. How loud an outcry, from the very same quarters, would have followed a system of compulsion, may be inferred from the strange contradiction which “closes a period” in the “Reply.” “He must be a very prejudiced man who calls the poor clerk a voluntary agent in the matter, when he is enticed by a bribe, which his small salary makes an irresistible temptation, or compelled by the fear of the loss of his only means of subsistence.” [28] “The poor clerk” is not threatened with the loss of his subsistence: that he is not, was urged just now against the authors of the measure as a proof of conscious guilt or weakness.

But is it not, you ask, too strong a temptation to a man of infirm religious principles, to offer him a reward for Sunday labour? Can you expect him to resist the “bribe?” And if afterwards this voluntary labour should lie heavily on his conscience, how could you justify to yourself your own share in his transgression? Now, if the act proposed be in itself, and of necessity, a sin; if no consideration of motives or circumstances can justify the occupation of any portion of the Sunday in the most urgent of worldly concerns; he, certainly, is deeply guilty, who proposes it, even with an alternative, to the choice of his neighbour. But, if this be one of those questions on which God’s Word leaves scope, within certain limits, for the exercise of an individual judgment; if, in reducing to practical detail the admitted duty of a religious observance of the Sunday, one man may conscientiously approve what another no less conscientiously condemns, and it remains only that “every man be fully persuaded in his own mind;” then the demand made by this Regulation upon the candour and courage of those to whom it offers the work and the wages, is no greater than that which must daily be encountered by all who labour for their own bread, and would do so in the fear of God. To none does it propose, as the Author of the Reply would lead us to imagine, the surrender of religious instruction and worship, the abandonment of all opportunity of serious meditation, or the devotion of the Lord’s Day to the service of a “godless or thoughtless multitude.” [29a] On the contrary, the possibility of such profanation, within the precincts to which its authority extends, the Order in question expressly and peremptorily precludes. [29b]

There remains, however, on the minds of many, an impression, scarcely affected by the most conclusive reply to individual objections, that the result, if not the object, of the late alteration will be a delivery of letters on the Sunday in London. Hitherto, it is said, the merchants of London have enjoyed, and have thought themselves entitled to enjoy, an advantage in this respect over the merchants of Bristol or of Liverpool. Letters arriving in London on the Sunday were in their possession at a far earlier hour on the Monday than that at which they could reach the hands of their provincial rivals. Can it be expected that the loss of this advantage will be borne with patience? Will not an irresistible clamour demand some compensation? And what can this compensation be, but a Sunday delivery of letters in London? Now let it be remembered, in the first place, that the advantage lost by London is not given to the country. No one pretends to say that by means of the Sunday transmission through London the provincial merchant will receive his letters earlier than the metropolitan. The injury complained of is at last but equality. The complaint rests only on the supposition that the London merchant has a right to an advantage over his provincial competitor. And, if this advantage has been once lost; if the claim to superiority has once been set aside; if the interests of every country merchant throughout England are now concerned in preventing its restoration; may it not be expected that the clamours of London for the reestablishment of inequality will be balanced by the clamours of the provinces for the maintenance of equality? But, again, from what quarter shall we expect the demand for a Sunday delivery in London? The merchants of London have pledged themselves, by the terms of their late remonstrances, to the principle of Sunday observance. They have availed themselves of the religious argument in their recent agitation. They have urged the sacred right of every Englishman to his seventh day of rest. Is it to be supposed, that they who have resisted, on religious grounds, the slightest possible interference with the completeness of the Sabbatical rest, are prepared now to revenge their disappointment by clamouring for a wide and sweeping desecration? If any examples of so lamentable an inconsistency should unhappily be presented, nothing more can be required, as an exposure of the new agitation, than a reference to the recorded principles of the old.

I have now discharged, however imperfectly, the task imposed upon me by circumstances which I must still deplore. Earnestly, most earnestly, do I desire the thankful and reverent observance of the Lord’s Day, with which I believe our national as well as individual welfare to be closely, inseparably linked. Deeply do I lament the condition of those weary and comfortless labourers, who are cut off from the inestimable blessings to be derived from its holy rest. It is because I believe that many of the provincial officers of our national Post Office are involved in this calamity, and that the present measure contemplates, and in part effects, their emancipation, that I have condemned the blind hostility with which it has been assailed, and laboured to expose the misrepresentations by which that hostility has been fostered.

While, however, the late alteration has been, in my opinion, a measure of relief, for which many will have cause to be thankful, it is not a final measure. The Government itself has not so regarded it. Other measures of Sunday relief have followed and are following it in quick succession. Already the order is given for the final closing (as a general rule) of every country Post Office on the Sunday, at ten o’clock in the morning. I have intimated in my former Letter the particular hopes which I entertain of a still further reform. [33] I do not despair of the arrival of a day when every Post Office throughout England and Wales shall have followed yet more completely the example of the Post Office of London; when the ordinary delivery of letters shall be totally suspended every where on the Sunday, while at the same time, from a due regard to the infinite necessities of a great country in an advanced stage of civilization, the sanctity of the day of rest is not so interpreted as to shorten practically by one the six days of labour. To this extent, at least, my own hopes and wishes are carried. If it should prove that even more than this can safely be attempted; that the transmission, as well as the delivery, of letters may from the Saturday to the Monday be suspended; far be it from me to raise a finger in hindrance of so unexpected, yet theoretically so desirable, a result. Let me only express a hope, that, if this demand be seriously urged upon the attention of the Government and the Legislature, it may not be made in a spirit which must rouse the just indignation of those to whom it is addressed, while it alienates the sympathy of every candid and reasonable mind.

Believe me, my dear Sir,

Yours very truly,

C. J. VAUGHAN.

Lapworth Rectory,
December 29, 1849.