ment of labour's hosts have continued such observance is held to promote to grow in importance, and have reached upto the full development of modern civilization and progress. Vast strides have been made in the development of the industrial arts and in bringing earth's wastes under cultivation. The railway and the steamship have superseded the primitive modes of communication. Nations separated by wide distances are now neighbours and have intimate relations. Man's material condition has greatly improved, and the fruits of his labours are abundant beyond any previous period. He has now reached a stage of development and has accomplished material results that present a startling contrast to his early condition. But he has not outlived his dependence upon the commands of his Creator. The same old decalogue is the law to restrain and govern, and is, at the same time, the venerable Magna Charta of his liberties. Its provisions can only be disregarded at his ruinous cost. The observance of the weekly rest-day still confers the most important social, sanitary, intellectual and religious privileges; and, amid the intensity of action and the high pressure of our generation, it is more essential to his welfare than at any previous period. Sunday observance legislation may rest upon purely civil grounds and will find in this a sufficient foundation, even if divine obligation and religious requirement is ignored. The proper ain of human enactment is to secure justice and promote the public welfare. It cannot properly trample upon human rights, reduce to a condition of slavery, or deny protection to the humble and the oppressed. A law that is calculated to confer upon the people great physical, material and social blessings needs no defence. Such a law may utterly ignore all recognition of religious duty, and may simply require the observance of the Sunday rest-day so far as abstaining from labour and unseemly recreations and actions are concerned, because the public good. The results following the enforcement of such a law would clearly justify its enactment from the purely civil standpoint only. Among these results would be found the protection of the toiler in the enjoyment of a right essential to his highest intellectual and physical interests; protection from the conscienceless greed of the classes who pocket the dividends swelled by the Sunday toil of the white slaves, whose natural rights and religious scruples are ruthlessly trampled in the dust in the scramble of the money-grabber and the pleasure-seeker; the legal establishment of the best of all sanitary arrangements resulting in the more efficient promotion of public health, cleanliness and self-respect; greatly increased opportunity for securing the benefits of the higher education furnished by Church and Sabbath school; the resulting increase of Christian homes which are the graduating schools of good citizens and the bulwark of the State; the promotion of temperance and the spirit of obedience to the law, as well as of good morals and social purity; and the securing to the toiler the rights of conscience and religious liberty. The State cannot with propriety be indifferent to the operation of all influences, religious or otherwise, that tell upon the moral and physical condition of the citizen, and the prohibition of obscene books and prints. The suppression of obscene plays, the enforcement of quarantine egulations, the destruction of infected clothing, the isolation of persons smitten with infectious disease, and the destruction of infected herds and flocks are in line with, and justifiable upon, the same grounds as would be provisions for securing Sunday rest, because of the moral and physical blessings which result. From the economic standpoint Sunday labour is worse than unnecessary. The most serious economic problem of the day is to provide a remedy for the business disturbances arising from over-production. Sunday labour simply tends to intensify this evil. In the near future, it is not improbable that shortening the hours of labour will be one of the remedies applied. Cessation of Sunday labour is one of the most obvious of the remedies for over-production. Sunday labour is never in the interest of the workingman. Under present conditions of production it means seven days' work for six days' pay; nay, worse, it means that seven days' labour will bring the weekly wage below the figure that would be given if the Sunday rest were strictly adhered to. Railway corporations are the most remorseless offenders against the rights of labour. To remedy the evil so far as the railways are concerned concurrent action is necessary, and individual action can only be applied with difficulty, and to a limited extent. An adequate remedy for existing evils can be provided only by the intervention of civil authority. Intelligent railway employees are not in favour of Sunday labour. The responsibility for the evil comes home to the gentlemen who pocket the dividends. Threequarters of the Sunday work upon railways could be dispensed with without injury to public interests. Pressure of business is no excuse. This reason could be made to justify almost any desecration of the Sabbath by labour. The provision of more rolling stock and the employment of more men is the simple and sufficient remedy. The higher moral tone and the increased efficiency and alertness among railway employees that would result from Sunday rest and its natural influences, would of itself largely make good the apparent diminution of transportation capacity resulting from the discontinuance of Sunday labour. To protect the labourer, and especially the railway labourer, in the right to Sunday rest, stringent legislation is required. Against such legis lation it is objected that it is religious lawmaking, that it interferes with the liberty of the individual, and that if a man wants to work on Sunday no law should prevent his doing so. Sunday rest legislation cannot properly interfere with religious convictions, or the reverse, and cannot properly prescribe religious observances and usages. It can, however, with propriety secure to the toiler the right to enjoy religious privileges, and to follow the dictates of his conscience. Blackstone has said of Sabbath observance: "It is of admirable service to the State, considered merely as a civil institution." Justice Field, of the United States Supreme Court, when Chief Justice of California, said, when pronouncing judgment in an appeal against a Sunday observance law: "The legislature has the right to make laws for preservation of health and the promotion of good morals; and so to require periodical cessation from labour, if of opinion it would tend to both." If legal enactment is necessary to enable the toiler to wash off the grime and stain of toil; to put off the greasy blouse and overall, and unclean attire, a respectable and self-respecting citizen, to spend Sunday with his wife and family, and with them to attend church and Sunday-school, if he desires, are not the highest. interests of himself, of his family, and of the State thereby promoted; and does not such a law secure for him and for his the exercise of a civil right in the highest sense? The artisan, employee, or labourer who believes that Sunday labour is a degradation, and who desires to secure the blessing of Sunday rest, should remember that to fasten upon others a bondage from which any portion of the great fraternity of toilers seeks to escape is treason to the cause, and tends powerfully to secure the success of the attempt to break down all opposition to Sunday labour. He shall scorn to ask for, or participate in, any enjoyment or holiday that dooms a lax Sunday regulations, and is now fellow-labourer to loss of his Sunday becoming alive to the importance of rest and privileges. Only works of Sunday rest. There the Sunday rest necessity and mercy should be per- cause is making rapid progress. In mitted. No requirement beyond that connection with the World's Fair at limitation should be made. The rights Paris, in 1889, an International Conof labour to Sunday rest can be secur- gress of Weekly Rest was held under ed only by the united action of those the authorization of the French Govinterested in securing that right. If ernment, September 21st to 27th. the holiday-seeking labourer requires This Congress passed resolutions rethe services of the excursion train- commending the securing of Sunday men, or of the street-car conductor, rest for labourers by legislative enactmotor-men and power-house staff, he ment. In 1890 the International has surrendered the principle of Sun- Labour Congress was convened by the day rest requirements, and has aided Emperor William II. at Berlin, March to set in motion the influences that 15th to 30th. This Congress also will sooner or later, perhaps, end in passed resolutions in favour of Sunday the loss of his own liberties. rest, and of legislative action for securing the same. In each of these cases the action taken was entirely independent of religious considerations, and Sunday rest was treated by both of these bodies as a question pertaining entirely to civil jurisdiction. Legislative enactments in the line of these resolutions have been made by nearly all the States of Continental Europe. The agitation for street railway service on Sunday, if successful, will lead to calamitous results. The quiet of the Sabbath will be surrendered, continuous labour will be forced upon unwilling men. Excursions and junketings will shock the sense of propriety of the religious, and will draw into the vortex of temptation, and scorn of religious and moral restraint, the class over whom it is most important that such restraints should be placed. The attendance upon Church and Sunday school will be diminished, and a long stride will have been made towards the complete secularization of the day. The Sabbath quiet of Toronto, of Ottawa, and of most other Canadian cities, reminds us of the Sabbath of our fathers. In most of the cities of the United States no such object lesson is furnished. It is said that American tourists sneer at our puritanical regard for the rest day, and that American hotel patronage is repelled because facilities are not furnished for Sunday jaunts and pleasure-seeking. If such is the case, let those who are lovers of pleasure and Sabbath desecration rather than lovers of God, moral order, and salutary regulations, betake themselves to the land of Sunday newspapers and Sunday street cars. Europe has tried Sunday labour and Whatever influences are in the future to elevate humanity, whatever forces are to work in the direction of producing a purer and nobler civilization, must not only reach the masses, but must act specially and powerfully upon them. The environment, the privileges and the purposes of the powerful, and the rich, is a matter of minor importance. The masses now possess intelligence and constantly increasing educational advantages. No longer is it true that their opinions and their desires are of small importance. The days of serfdom and vassalage are past. The artisan and the toiler now have votes, and each one as a factor in the affairs of the State is equal in political consequence to the man of higher social position. The future of civilization depends in a large measure upon the great class who must fight the battles of the nation in time of war, and develop its resources in time of peace; who must till its fields, gather its harvests, dig its minerals, run its spindles and forges, build its shops, and create its wealth. In working out the problem of the world's future, if a satisfactory solution is reached, Sunday rest with its attendant blessings must bear a conspicuous part. Without it the most elevating mental and moral influences will be lost to the masses. Without it the forces of Christianity, which have given modern civilization every characteristic of the superiority it possesses over the brutal and polluted forms of heathen civilization, will become nerveless and atrophied. The enjoyment of Sunday rest, then, I assert, is a civil right the possession of which is pregnant with social, moral, material, and intellectual consequences that commend it to the State as a necessary and proper subject for the exercise of legislative functions; and to the citizen as a privilege of priceless importance which the mandate of the civil law should secure to all. John Charlton. THAT BY GEORGE TATE BLACKSTOCK, Q.C. A more humiliating convention England has scarcely ever entered into. A moment's reflection ought to convince anyone that there is every ground for the United States to indulge in the coaxation and frog-galliards to which we shall now be treated by our neighbours to the south. One would think, to hear some of the sighs of relief which reach us from England, that if we have not made a very advantageous bargain, at least we have done our best in very difficult circumstances. But that is absolutely HAT the terms upon which it is announced the Venezuelan controversy is to be settled should provoke a stirring pean of applause in the United States is quite natural; that they should be received in England with placid acquiescence is not surprising to anybody who contemplates the habitual ignorance and indifference which Englishmen generally display in dealing with the American section of the Empire; but that these terms should fail to arouse the indignation of and compel a protest from every Canadian seems incredible. at variance with the facts. We have in our international dealings The British Empire and the Repubwith the United States taken many lic of Venezuela are neighbours in blows, and received many injuries, South America, and had what we chiefly through a culpable and as- would call in this country a "linetounding lack of address and atten- fence" dispute. Venezuela for many tion to our interests upon the part of years vainly endeavoured to induce the Home Government. Most of us her antagonist to submit this dispute had hoped that this state of affairs to arbitration, which the latter as had passed away forever, and thought persistently declined to do. Then we discovered in the association of the United States intervened in what Canadian statesmen with English is called "a friendly way," and endiplomats in our international tribu- deavoured to secure for Venezuela what nals, and in various other circumstan- she had failed to secure for herself; ces, signs and omens of a brighter day. but again Great Britain refused to arBut I venture to think that the sun bitrate, except with certain limitations, total of all our misfortunes can scar- to which Venezuela declined to agree. cely equal the injury done to us by the Up to this point, therefore, the worst Venezuelan settlement, and that, too, phase of the situation for England whether one regards it from a materi- was, that she should arbitrate about a al or sentimental standpoint. piece of disputed territory with a |