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Imperial parliament,Sunday labour in the Post-office.Tnrrl Ashley on Thursday brought forward .118 Lord Ash .. . f Sunday labour 111 the post-X” claim to (tie ct n-office. Ifth h d and estensive■T«;°tnhal had been manifested in it by the wholeinterest that country, it would deserve most re-constituenty o riJear hear.] No other subjectKdiaused?1“more lively sensation in the public mind than this, nor was the interest confined to on. c ass orWeS It ««« not confined to any one station nr dir or rank of society, but the feeling prevaj edorder or rank oI society, uui vfrom ’the highest to the lowest. [Hear, hear] Thatfeeling was not confined to any religious sect nor to anv class. But this question must be urged on higher grounds—on the grounds of justice to the parties concerned, and of its importance to the whole rntintrv He hoped this discussion would be conducted in a sober spirit. He for his part would nay that he would utter nothing which should in the least degree excite anger or promote division. On the c m-trary, he must begin by thanking the government t.nd the post-office authorities for what they had alreudy done in this matter. They had already conferred a great benefit on the country, and he hoped taey would accomplish their own good work, and perfectly establish their own reputation. He should just like to state to the house the extent to which the public had expressed their feelings on this vital subject. The report of the petitions presented respecting it was not complete up to the present cay. The total number of petitions, however, presented relating to it up to the 24th May, was 3,820, und the total number of signatures appended to those petitions, was 549,538. How many of those petitions (from Scotland alone, 335) were signed by the chairman. There were, besides, several hundreds of petitions yet to be presented, and he had, therefore, a right to conclude that the signatures appended to the petitions on this subject would actually amount to no leas than 700,000, and that the number of petitioners in favour of this motion did not fall short of one million and a half of persons. The i eti-tion from the town of Liverpool in favour of this motion was signed by 14,000; and 200 bankers and merchants in that town formed themselves into an association for promoting the object of that motion. The petition from Manchester was signed by 31,000 persons, among whom were a great many of the largest firms and the greatest capitalists in that city. The petition from Aberdeen was signed by 16,702; from Paisley, 6,563 ; from Edinburgh, 24,298; and from Glasgow 21,750. The town council of Glasgow consisted of 50 persons, 41 of whom had signed the petition. In 1839, when the subject of the penny postage came under discussion in that house, the government yielded to a body of petitioners amounting only to 266,511, and that discussion affected a revenue to the amount of £1,000,000. This present request had boon backed by full 700.000 petitioners, who a iked for no exemption from taxation, who asked for nothing for themselves, but simply that a boon may bo extended to a certain number of their fellow-creaturea. The London memorial was signed by about 5,000 per-
Newspaper Details
Middlesex Chelmsford Chronicle
London, Middlesex, GB
Fri, Jun 07, 1850
Page 4
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 18 Jul 2023
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