Punch: Punch (78.1880)

W PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [January 17, 1880.

LORD DERBY ON “BRITISH COMMERCE.’'

Perfectly Sound, but a little bit Out of Condition.

A LESSON OUT OE THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL.

We often hear the Manchester School decried nowadays; hut
still it may sometimes read London a lesson.

Such a lesson Manchester has been reading London in the matter
of the opening on Sundays of more innocent and profitable resorts,
outside the pale of the Church, than the public-house.

Manchester has always shown the courage of her convictions. If
some of them have been fairly chargeable with narrowness, others
may, with at least equal reason, he praised for breadth.

To this latter class belongs the conviction of some of the Com-
mittee of the ltoyal Manchester Institution, that the best way of
tapping the Public-house, would be to open the Picture Exhibition
of the Institution on Sunday.

The point was mooted, contested—sharply and bitterly, probably,
as such points are wont to be — but the Sunday-openers carried
it, and proceeded forthwith to “ draw off,” not the Sunday beer-
barrels, hut their customers.

Punch is glad to note the result.

In the eleven Sundays on which the Gallery of the Institution has
been open, 51,678 persons have visited it, most of them of the class

to whom the Public is the only available Sunday recreation between
two and five, hours during which Public-houses are open, and
Churches closed.

The Institution was careful, by its choice of hours, to proclaim
itself the rival of the places of tipple, not the places of worship.

This great crowd has poured into and through the Institution
Galleries, without let or hindrance. A few volunteers have attended
to assist in marshalling the multitude, and showing them the order of
their going from room to room. But there has been no erection of
barriers or reeving of ropes for the protection of the pictures. The
marshals have encountered no incivility; the pictures and frames
have sustained no damage. Two enthusiasts have paid for the
printing of some thousand extra catalogues, to be lent to these
Sunday-Gallery visitors, and returned by them on leaving the In-
stitution. Scarcely a catalogue has been lost or detained.

In a word, the experiment has been a conspicuous success. I or
the first time, we believe, a Picture-Gallery in a great densely-
peopled manufacturing borough has been opened to ‘ ‘ the masses
without payment, tickets, or any other restriction or condition,
more freely, in short, than the Public-house, into which none may
enter impecunious.