The People's Palace and the Religious World

Disagreement with the object and dislike of the tone of the incipient agitation for preventing the concession of a Royal Charter to the Crystal Palace Company, except upon the condition of its gates being closed on Sunday—a desire to vindicate the consistency of many religious people, whose silence might be construed into sympathy with the movement—and the wish to offer a few thoughts on the impolicy, in a religious point of view, of such attacks on the pleasures of the poor:—are, in brief, the motives which have determined the printing of the following pages. The writer believes the ground traversed is firm and solid, though he is unable to beguile the journey with those flowers of rhetoric and gleams of warm fancy with which more gifted writers can brighten their course. Though inexperience in book-making and pamphleteering is no excuse for unsound conclusions, he hopes it may avail to disarm the severity of criticism. Convinced that for the advantage of true religion, as well as its professors, the ideas he has broached require to be freely, closely, and sincerely discussed, he ventures to claim for them candid and unprejudiced consideration. He hopes it is superfluous to state that he has no pecuniary interest in, nor connexion with, the project in question.