. You repair to the National Gallery.
You long to behold the masterpieces of art, to have your imagination
quickened and thrilled by the glories of form and color, to look once
more on some favorite picture which touches your nature to its finest
issues. But again you are foiled. You desire to visit a library, full
of books you cannot buy, and there commune with the great minds who have
left their thoughts to posterity. But you are frustrated again. You are
cheated out of your natural right, and treated less like a man than a
dog.

This Christian legislature has much to answer for. Drunkenness is our
great national vice. And how is it to be overcome? Preaching will not do
it. Give Englishmen a chance, furnish them with counter attractions, and
they will abjure intoxication like their continental neighbors. Elevate
their tastes, and they will feel superior to the vulgar temptation of
drink. Every other method has been tried and has failed; this is the
only method that promises success.

Fortunately the Sunday question is growing. Christian tyranny is
evidently doomed. Mr. Howard's motion for the opening of public
museums and art galleries, although defeated, received the support of
eighty-five members of Parliament. That minority will increase again
next year, and in time it will become a majority. Mr. Broadhurst, for
some peculiar reason, voted against it, but we imagine he will some day
repent of his action. The working-classes are fools if they listen to
the idle talk about Sunday labor, with which the Tories and bigots try
to bamboozle them. The opening of public institutions on Sunday would
not necessitate a hundredth part of the labor already employed in
keeping open places of worship, and driving rich people to and fro. All
the nonsense about the thin end of the wedge is simply dust thrown into
their eyes. The very people who vote against Sunday freedom under a
pretence of opposing Sunday labor, keep their own servants at work and
visit the "Zoo" in the afternoon, where they doubtless chuckle over
the credulity of the lower orders. Christian tyranny unites with Tory
oppression to debase and enslave the people. It is time that both were
imperiously stopped. The upper classes wish to keep us ignorant, and
parsons naturally want everybody else's shutters up when they open shop.
We ought to see through the swindle. Let us check their impudence, laugh
at their hypocrisy, and rescue our Sunday from their hands.