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We think this answer sufficient. St. Paul, if a fixed pastor of a flock of many thousands, living in one place for many years, would not, we think, disapprove of either Mr. Miller's factory meetings, or Mr. Myers's Castle Howard village instructions.

SABBATH OBSERVANCES.

WE have frequently been called upon to advocate the observance of the Sabbath. Apart from all ideas connected with its divine origin, and on which it will be altogether unnecessary for us to enlarge, it is especially the poor man's rest. It dates from before the curse, that no one might be exempt from its healing and comforting influence, and the command to observe it is found in the decalogue, as though to prevent all cavilling about the privilege being granted to all nations, and enduring to the end of time. At the present moment, when there is a league formed under high auspices virtually to abolish the Sabbath, by throwing open on that day every species of public amusement, it becomes necessary for all who really value a seventh-day's rest to take care that their minds are not obfuscated by the intolerable nonsense which is, under the guise of liberality, talked on this subject. "The Sunday-league," so called because its object is to do away with the Sunday, derives its title from a similar fallacy to the "lucus a non lucendo ;" and, like the League, generally called the " Corn-law League," it advocates the demolition of that which its name seems to advocate. We would, on the present occasion, treat the matter wholly on secular grounds. Leaving out all religious sanction, purposely omitting all reference to a divine command, we would simply ask, What is the labourer to do without a Sabbath-day? Is the curse-for a curse it is, let the advocates of the dignity of labour say what they like-Is the curse of perpetual toil to have no intermission? Is there to be no oasis in the desert of unremitting exertion? No: say all the feelings of our best and purest humanity; let there be some foretaste of coming rest; let there be some opportunity of recovering from the effects which ceaseless toil would produce; let there be some recognition of the great and eternal fact, that man is not a mere machine, to raise so many quarters of wheat, to administer to the fatting of so many beeves and pigs, or to dig so many tons of iron, lead, copper, or gold. Were we advocating the observance of a seventh day solely on religious principles, we might, perhaps, be obliged to admit that there is some force in the reply, leave to God

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that which belongs to Him-do not attempt to enforce, by mere human laws, that which has reference to the far more sacred province of the divine will: but we maintain that it is for man's secular welfare that these laws should be enforced: it is for his material and worldly benefit that they were originally given, and if our Heavenly Father has added spiritual blessings and advantages, which have their fulness in eternity, to the observance of a religious Sabbath, that is certainly no reason whatever why we should deny to man the temporal and earthly repose which was at the same time conferred upon him. In short, we might say to those who want to abolish the Sabbath-gentlemen, be as heathen as you please, that is your affair, only do not insist on making our poor people work every day of the seven, that is ours. For this reason it is that man is imperatively called on to legislate on this subject. Paley, and many after him, have boldly declared that the Sabbath has no other authority than the law of the land. We do not admit this; but we do clearly see that to enforce any religious observances would be placing the government in a wrong position; and for the very reason that we admit this, we would call on that very government to protect the labouring man in the observance of a day of rest. Paley may say, the law gives it him. We say, his Father which is in heaven gives it him. But whether we or Paley be right, certain it is that the day is given to him by a competent authority, and that he has a right to it unviolated.

If places of public amusement are opened, thousands and tens of thousands will be compelled to work, not for necessity or mercy, but for mere greed of gain. If it be lawful to follow one's worldly avocations on that day, thousands and millions will, for the same cause, avail themselves of what they will foolishly call a privilege; and if they do, how can their neighbours help following their example; how can I keep my shop shut and yet preserve my customers, while those who on my right and left exercise the same trade are ready to supply them. There is no imperative necessity that this should be so: all that is wanted can just as well be got on the Saturday, and if all shops were shut, would be got on that day: the gain is nothing, the loss is immense. There are parts of London where there is actually no Sabbath at all; and if there were one stringent law closing all shops without exception, or only excepting chemists and druggists, what would be the effect? Why, first, that all shops would be closed alike, all tradesmen would have a day of rest which now they have not. Those who supply the more educated classes

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of society have a Sabbath; those who supply the poor, who are more nearly approaching to them in condition, and who work the hardest, have none. Another effect would be, that we should soon have payment of wages on Saturday morning, or on Friday night, and thus the labouring man would get a holiday on Sunday which at present is their marketing day. A still further advantage would be the securing a Saturday half-holiday; it could not long be withholden. Employers are gradually opening their eyes to the fact, that a man works more and better for not being over-worked; that a greater amount of work is done in five days and a half, paradoxical as it may seem, than in six days. The next advantage would be, the diminution of the worship paid at present to Saint Monday, whose rites are celebrated with gin and beer to an enormous extent among working men. The Saturday half-holiday will render unnecessary this cessation from labour; and as a lawful holiday is always more profitably spent than an unlawful one, so it will be in the interest alike of virtue and of religion, of wives and children, of masters and workmen, that there should be this Saturday half-holiday. But we are far from having as yet finished our list of benefits. The early closing movement will gain a great impulse. If it be shown that shops may be closed on Sunday morning, it will soon become evident that purchases made be made at such houses as may be mutually convenient to shopkeepers and their customers. If a half-holiday be practicable on a Saturday, surely it will be possible to close at eight o'clock all the year round. Shopkeepers and shopmen will have an hour or two to improve their minds, they will not be so totally worn out when they leave off toil as to be capable of nothing, which does not supply the maximum of excitement: their physical well-being will keep pace with their moral, and all classes will be ultimately benefited, and that in no small degree, by the observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest. We speak of compulsory observance, well aware that there can be no other. If to what we have said be added the spiritual advantages attending the due use of the means of grace, we shall have an admirable illustration of the apostolic assertion, that "Godliness with contentment is great gain; having promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come."

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT.

WE are now duly informed of the accession to the supreme power, in the great Transatlantic Republic of Mr. Buchanan.

That this gentleman has been hitherto one of the great supporters of slavery—that it has been his policy to make capital, political capital, out of any possible differences between this country and America-that he has fraternised with those who wished, by fair means or foul, to possess themselves of Cuba-all these things would make us extremely anxious as to the continuance of pacific relations with the United States, had not long experience taught us that the policy of the White House has long ceased to be foreshadowed on the hustings. We know that certain professions are necessary to secure votes, but that when the votes are secured the professions are forgotten. It is not, however, with a view to promulgate a truth known to all diplomatists on both sides of the Atlantic, that we have taken up our pen on the present occasion, but rather to call attention to the slow but sure working of a cause which few seem to notice; but which will, ere long, cut the Gordian knot which so many hands are trying in vain to untie. The great "difficulty" in and with America is the system of slavery. The great support of slavery is not any set of particular political opinions, not the predominance of any one party in the state, not even the ascendancy of the south over the north in the great council of the nation, but the cotton crop. Slave-grown cotton supplies free England, and through her all Europe, with cotton goods: they are grown in America, made up in Lancashire, and thence diffused over the world. India and China clothe their swarthy sons and daughters with the slave production of Carolina and Georgia, and so long as this monopoly lasts so long slavery in America is safe. But there is a net-work of railways covering British India, which will in a few years bring down Indian cotton more in quantity, and even finer in quality, than that which America can supply, and at a considerably cheaper rate. Tunis is commencing, under the most favourable auspices, the same kind of agriculture. The French Government is encouraging its growth in Algeria. Liberia is becoming also a competitor in the market; and it seems morally certain that in a quarter of a century we shall be as independent of the United States for cotton as we are now for sugar. Such a circumstance as this can have but one termination: the estates in Virginia and the other earlier planted states are already becoming poor and exhausted; slavery has brought poverty with it; and when there is no longer the same demand for cotton, and when, after a comparatively short time, the demand almost ceases, then slavery can no longer be upheld. The estates in the Southern States will pass through the same cycle as our own

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West India islands have done, and will, perhaps, go almost wholly out of cultivation. That much calamity will attend such a cycle, we cannot for a moment doubt, but the result will be a far greater degree of prosperity; they will pass from slave states to free states; the rivalry between north and south will come to an end, and America will be fully at liberty to pursue her glorious destiny, and be the civilizer and ultimately the ruler of the Western hemisphere. It is a singular but a most encouraging proof that this theory is not a mere theory, that our West India islands are now beginning to recover from their long ruin. Estates in Jamaica which, but five years ago were offered for £3000, are now sought for at £7000; and we have no hesitation in predicting, that before ten years are past away, those magnificent islands will be rejoicing in a free prosperity, far greater than that which they enjoyed during the most palmy days of their slave cultivation.

OUR CRIMINALS.

WHAT are we to do with our criminals? is a question that for some time past the whole country has been most anxiously asking. Their numbers are increasing, and the ticket-ofleave system throws an additional number on our streets and lanes, some, too, of the most dangerous to be found anywhere. Our ancestors had less trouble on this point, because they had consciences less tender; they could take culprits by the dozen and send them, with all their sins on their head, into the presence of their Maker; forgetting that in so doing they gave them also a place in the hangman's book of martyrs, handed their names down to future generations of thieves as worthy of all honour and worship; forgetful, too, that at each of these frightful moral lessons they sowed every species of crime and immorality broad cast at the foot of the gallows. Our ancestors, too, had what they called colonies, consisting of waste land by the thousand square miles, easy of access, and worth cultivating. Now we have used up our land for its more legitimate purposes. Our new colonies will not be made moral sewers for the reception of our superabundant crime; and even our older ones, which had long looked on convicts as advantages, now can furnish an innocent population, and refuse any longer to give our criminals a home. What are we to do? The ticket-of-leave system has been now fairly tried it has, in one way, succeeded beyond the hopes of its authors, but in another it has been equally signal as a failure. The plan was to release the criminal at a period short of his sentence of penal servitude, and to let him loose