The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1886.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 237, 8 October 1886, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1886.

For the cauae that lack* assistance, For tho wrong that needs reoißtance, F«r tho future in the distance. And the good that we can do.

Were a fact needed to bring out in all its horrors the question of Larrikinism it would be found in the hideous story which has lately crossed orer to us from Sydney. The details are hardly fit for publication; and yet so terrible is their import that in the public interest we cannot but allude to; rfiem. In Moore Park, in the broad daylight, a defenceless girl fell into the clutches of a gang of brutes. One after another they did her the most cruel wrong which man can do to woman, until sense failed her and she lay at their mercy. Some six unmanly ruffians calmly looked on whilst this fiendish crime was being perpetrated, without the fellow feeling to make them protest, or the manhood to strike a blow in her defence. .Murder would probably have crowned the brutal violence of these fiends in tuman shape, had the poor victim not been rescued at last through the fearless interposition of a brave fellow named Stanley. He did what he could unaided to save her from these ruffians, and when all his efforts were insufficient —how could it be otherwise, considering the tremendous odds I —rushed off to obtain the assistance of the police. Such, in barest outlines, is the dark and shameful tale, as it comes to us from the sister colony. la our boasted 19th century with all the sweetness and light of high civilization, within hail of a city containing some 250,000 souls this cruel crime is done, and it is done by larrikins.

Are we los;ng, or have we lost, the high spirit of our ancestor* which

made them abovo all things do honour to their women and won the approval of the debauched and profligate Romans, that such a deed as this is possible in our society 1 Let us hear •what an English judge (Mr Justice Mellor) said when hearing the trial of a similar case. The trial took placo at Liverpool. Commenting on the facts of brutal violence, and tho cowardly inhumanity of the spectators, his Lordship indignantly said : " I want to know how it is possible in a Christian country like this that there should bo such a state of feeling, even amongst boys of 13, 16, and 18 years of age. It is outrageous. If there are missionaries wanted to the heathen, there are heathons in England who require teaching a great deal more than those Abroad." (Murmurs of " Hear, hoar," from the jury bos, and applause in Court.) His Lordship continued : 11 Silence ! It is quite shocking to hear boys of this age come up and say these things-. How, indeed, is it possible ? That is the question which staggers one. Murder there will be; manslaughter, rape, burglary, theft are all Unfortunately recurring and common iv crimes in every community. Nothing in the supposed natureof ' Englishmen' can bo expected to mako our assizes maiden and our gaol deliveries blank. But there was thought to l»e something in tho blood of tho race which would somehow sorvo tcokeep us from seeing

a gang of Lancashire lads making a ring to sea a woman outraged to death. A hnndrud cases nowadays tell us to discard that idle belief;' if it ever was truo, it is true no longer. Tho most brutal, tho most cowardly, tho most pitiless, tho most barbarous deeds done in the world, are boing perpetrated by the lower classes of tho English peoplo—onco held to bo by their birth, howovor lowly, generous, bravo, merciful and civilised. Iv nil the pagea of Dr. Livingstone's experience among tho Ncltoos of Africa, there is no single instance approaching tho Liverpool storjr in savagery of mind and body, in bestiality of heart and act. Nay, wo wrong tho lower animals by using that last word, the foulost among the beasts which perish is clean, the most ferocious gontlo, matched with these Lancashire pitmen, who make sport of the shame and slaying of a woman, and bhisphemo nature in their deeds, without even any plea whateror to oxcuso their cruelty."

Such are the brave outspoken vt-ovds of an English Judgo, enforced and driven home with all tho improssive surroundings of his high oflico. Wake a few trilling changes and they apply in all their uncompromising force and directness to this shameful Sydney story. Almost while we write tho magisterial investigation into the criminal and cruel deed is proceeding. Wo yield to nono in our respect for tho forms and proceduro of law ; such respect is the heritage and prido of Englishmen, and yet iv this case, so horrible and unnatural are its features, wo could almost wish that the perpetrators might bo handled by the rough-and-ready method of Judge Lynch, and receive in short shrift and summary fashion the reward due to their insult against manhood and the wrong they have worked on a holpless unoffending woman.

But setting this aside, cruel as tho matter is, and ghastly in nil its boaringH, it will not liavo beou douo in vain if it opens our oyes to tho grave question of lanikinism, if it determines ns to take such stojis as may ensuro the disappearance from amongst us of the grave social disease known under that name. Tho all-important point to roaliso is, that such a deed as this, is only tho development of tho leaser acts of lawlessness with which wo are so unfortunately familiar. It is nothing but tho full manifestation in all its hideousness of tho spirit which shows itself &t first in robbing gardens and potty acts of wanton destruction, in unprovoked and gratuitous insults on the old and unprotected, and culminates finally in brutal and atrocious outrage It is in the bud that the evil must be treated. 'A stitch in timo saves nine,' as tho old adngeruns, 'Let us then not scotch the snake but kill it, oro it reach maturity,' and, with its poisonous venom, do our civilisation, our social comfort, and our security to death.