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article actually sold; and consequently when this has been the case, attempts which have been made to enforce the law have been rendered abortive.

Your committee would have been glad to have found reason to expect, that the defects in the efficiency of the present law were likely to be supplied by moral means and an improved feeling amongst the parties engaged in the practice of Sunday trading. But, hitherto, though your committee are ready to believe public opinion amongst the body is more sensibly alive to the injuriousness of the system than formerly, the spirit of competition is too strong to render it effective. Notwithstanding the delivery of lectures on the subject, the distribution of tracts, and the attempts of the traders themselves to procure signatures to bind one another by voluntary agreement, the system continues to spread, and threatens an increase rather than a diminution of the evil.

Though your committee do not consider that the penalties of the law can be properly applied to the strict and complete observance of the Sunday, yet they feel called upon to recommend the introduction of a measure for effectually prohibiting public marketing and the open exposure and sale of goods on Sundays; the penalties to be enacted not being applicable to the sale of necessary articles of food for a certain period of the day, previous to the customary hours for the celebration of divine worship.

Your committee are encouraged to believe that a bill, founded upon the above principles, would be beneficial to all the parties interested, and most useful to the community at large. They are the more induced to think that this would be the case by the (universally admitted) fact-by all the witnesses who were examined upon

the point, that the closing of the public-houses till 1 o'clock in the afternoon had been attended with the best results. The wish of your committee is to liberate (not to fetter), and to give to the different classes engaged in Sunday trading a day of rest, without interfering with the necessary comforts of the other classes of society.

EXTRACT FROM A PRIVATE LETTER FROM IRELAND, DATED OCTOBER 11TH.

"Truly may this county be called blood-stained Tipperary. Within three miles of this, Mr. Roe, a magistrate, had established at his mother's house a soup kitchen for the destitute poor, at his own expense, attending which his two sisters got fever. You have heard of his fate. He was a kind and indulgent landlord.

"The rector of G. was obliged to fly, as he received a letter informing him that he would be murdered, Friday or Saturday last, going to C. He was most kind to the poor, aiding them in every way in his power.

"Although I have been denounced by the priests, and received two or three cautions from friends, I am not afraid, believing that I am in the hands of my heavenly Father, and that not one hair of my head can be touched without his permission. May He give me grace to go forward in his strength, spreading the Gospel seed through my parish, looking to him for a blessing on the word spoken.

"In G N there are hundreds now reading the Scriptures, and I am received all through my parish most gladly by them."

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Received" Christian Maiden Hymn"-" A. H. S."—"L. N."-" P. P."

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