Sunday Under Three Heads by Charles Dickens

THE provisions of the bill introduced into the House of Commons by Sir Andrew Agnew, and thrown out by that House on the motion for the second reading, on the 18th of May in the present year, by a majority of 32, may very fairly be taken as a test of the length to which the fanatics, of which the honourable Baronet is the distinguished leader, are prepared to go. No test can be fairer; because while on the one hand this measure may be supposed to exhibit all that improvement which mature reflection and long deliberation may have suggested, so on the other it may very reasonably be inferred, that if it be quite as severe in its provisions, and to the full as partial in its operation, as those which have preceded it and experienced a similar fate, the disease under which the honourable Baronet and his friends labour, is perfectly hopeless, and beyond the reach of cure.

The proposed enactments of the bill are briefly these: -All work is prohibited on the Lord's day, under heavy penalties, increasing with every repetition of the offence. There are penalties for keeping shops open-penalties for drunkenness-penalties for keeping open houses of entertainment-penalties for being present at any public meeting or assembly-penalties for letting carriages, and penalties for hiring them-penalties for travelling in steam-boats, and penalties for taking passengers-penalties on vessels commencing their voyage on Sunday-penalties on the owners of cattle who suffer them to be driven on the Lord's day-penalties on constables who refuse to act, and penalties for resisting them when they do.