SUNDAY EXCURSION TRAINS.
[To Tun EDITOR OP " SPECTATOR."] Sin,-11 great effort is to be made on Wednesday next to stop railway traffic on Sundays between London and Brighton. The effort is nominally against " excursion " trains, but it seems obvious that if the directors are to be stopped from accommodating the poor, they should not work their officers and servants for the convenience of the rich. Every share- holder has received an address (with a stamped proxy and
stamped envelope), in which it is urged that " a great duty and responsibility" rests upon him if he " does not earnestly and constantly protest against this sad desecration of God's Holy Day."
Having spent some years of my life as a curate in White- chapel, I would ask the agitators to consider what they are really aiming at. If it is wrong to convey people to Brighton, it is wrong to convey them anywhere out of London; and by those who have no chance of fresh air on any other day of the week, the day of rest would be spent in dreary streets or in tramping through dreary suburbs. The question should be looked at in all its bearings, and cheap locomotion out of our great cities on the only day in the week on which the working population can benefit by it, seems to me a, great means of preserving their health of body and health of mind
But with those who act on religious grounds, I found some agitatoni with whose motives I have far less sympathy. These are inhabitants of Brighton and other seaside places, who "suffer," it seems, "from the stream of excursionists." It does not seem to me that those who have the benefit of the sea- breezes all the year round acquire any proprietary rights in them, or that they can call on the railway directors to aid them in enforcing their monopoly. If they had for some Sundays to change houses with the excursionists, they would perhaps become more tolerant of sharing their sea and sun- shine for a few hours with the poor Londoners.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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