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11 
port of increased hours of leisure, I venture to say that you will find one of 
the reasons that we strongly urged was that we desire! sufficient spare time 
in the week in order to take our fair share of secular enjoyment during the 
working days of the week, and to visit the museums and picture galleries 
which were closed on Sundays. (Cheers.) If you open those picture galleries 
and museums on Sunday, it must correspondingly weaken the argument in 
favor of our Saturday half-holiday. , 
“You talk of this motion relieving the public house of its customers on a 
Sunday. I will ask my honorable friend if he is prepared to say that the 
skilled @®tizans of this country—that the respectable work-people of this 
country—spend their Sundays in public-houses? I am certain he is not pre- 
pared tusay so. Who are the poor, neglected creatures with whom our pub- 
lic-houses areeilled on Sundays, if they are filled? They are those who are 
the most > a of my class—the least skilled, and therefore the worst 
paid, and consequently the worst housed amongst our population. But surely 
you will not attempt to persuade this House to believe that this class of peo- 
ple, who loiter around the doors of a public-house during the hours that they 
cannot get admittance inside, are the people who are thirsting to worship 
_ your exhibitions of the fine arts miles from their homes. Will you suggest: 
that these are the class of people who would rush in their teeming thousands 
to the British Museum to make scientific and historical examinations of the 
mummies and other curiosities tMBt crowd the galleries, and to worship at 
the feet of the works of the old masters in the National Galleries? I am pos- 
itive you will not advance such extraordinary arguments in its favor. 
**Now, the argument of course is, that there is no fear he general sys- 
tem of labor following a motion of this kind. Yes, but where are you going 
to draw the line? (Hear, hear.) Once you have admitted this abstract prin- 
ciple, how are you going to hold it fast, and not let it encroach by degrees? 
Do we not hear every day how English manufactures are suffering from the 
keen competition of France, Germany, and other countries, and that the 
nations which work seven s a week, or, at any rate, which observe in no 
regular form the ui. on the seventh, have the advantage over 
English manufacturers, whose work-people work only on six days? If you 
admit this principle, that after all there is not so much in the general cessa- 
tion of labor on the seventh day, when it suits the fancies of a minority to say 
so, how will you meet the demand if some fine morning it is thought to be 
discovered that in order to maintain our trade and great profits we must in- 
crease the hours of labor, and finally make an inroad on the Sunday’s rest? 
I will not for a moment admit that any practical good can possibly come 
from the motion, and I sincerely hope that we shall never pass it.” 
In the same discussion, Mr. Mundella, M. P., a member of the 
Government, and widely known for his interest in questions of . 
labor, during the same debate, says : 


““There are 154 Museums inthe United Kingdom, a great part of them ée- 
longing to the municipalities of our large towns, and there are only four of them , 
which are open on Sunday. The town of Nottingham had done more for art 
and shown a higher appreciation of art than any town in England: it had 
obtained for itself a special act that it might tax itself highly to support its 
