SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1941, Page 6

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

PAST AND PRESENT STANDARDS. The remarkable change in public opinion about Sunday observance could not have been better illustrated, an English newspaper observes, than by the contrast between the general cheers which greeted Mr Morrison’s announcement on Sunday opening of theatres and the rigid Sabbatarianism of the Commons in February, 1856, when only one man of mark in the House stood up for the modest proposal to open the London museums. Last night (wrote Greville on February 21) the Evangelical and Sabbatarian interests had a great victory in the House of Commons, routing those who endeavoured to effect the opening of the National Gallery and the British Museum recently. The only' man of importance who sustained this unequal and imprudent contest was Lord Stanley. At this moment cant and Puritanism are in the ascendant, _ and so far from effecting any reform it will be very well if we escape some of the more stringent measures against. Sunday occupations and amusements with which Exeter Hall and the prevailing spirit threaten us. We were then in the last days of the Crimean War and that the nation generally (or at least the voters) were of one mind with the House of Commons was proved when Palmerston was told, in the same spring, that if he persisted in allowing bands to play in the parks on Sunday his Government would be defeated and that all who had voted for the bands would lose their seats if he went to the country.