Correspondence.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXV, Issue 3817, 12 November 1869, Page 5

Correspondence.

<• Our doubts are traitors, Anfl m»ho us lose the go*'* ?y tearing to at**- .* wa olt might wia m~ '• .mpt." +.v me Editor of th« Daily Southern Ckoss. Sir, — Will you please find apace ia your paper for the following long extract and remarks ;—; — " On the side of a bleak and barren hill, half a mile fiotn the village in which you reside, stands a, miserable house, or rather hotel, which has often attracted your attention in your vriilka, by its ruinous and dilapidated condition, and the pale, sickly, wretched children which shiver at the door. Did you ever consider whah sorb of a scene its interior usually presents, at night? Come with jne and see. The inner door, hanging by n^single hinge, opona ereakingly, and the cold, empty. miaeraMe apartment presents to you an expression of wretchedness far more gloomy than ever the exberior had I'd you to expect. The aickly worn-out wife and mother is trying iv vain to make out, from former remnants, some food for herself atid her half-starved children. They sit around the room, or hover over the embers, in a half stupor. They do n«t cry. The extreme of misery is silenr, and these wretched ones are beyond tears She ia hurrying through her work to get them away from »n approaching danger. What ia the danger which she does not dare that they should meet with her? Why their father is coming home. If it Mras the lightning, or a tornado, or » midnight Assassin, she would gather her children around her, and they J would feel safer and happier together. But their father is coming home, and the aucontrollable passions of an insane husband and father she chooses to bear alone. She sends her children away. She hids her babe in the most secret place she can find ; an emaciated | shivering boy spreads over him the thin covering which is all that is left, and draws himself up as if he was trying to shrink away from the cold ; and perhaps a girl, by a choice of i miseries, has pleaded for permission to atuy w" " other. All this is, however, t}'e mere y .. . ds — the preparation, anticipating the scene of real misery which the return of the abandoned husband and father is to bring. But here I must stop ; for if I w»<3 to describe the scene which emues, just as it is actually exhibited in thousands and tens of thousands of familieu every night, my readers would lay down the paper sick at heart, at the contemplation of the guilt and miseries of man. But tliB point I am wishing to bring to your view ia all this case is this : flow firmly anl steadily will Jehovah go on, night after night, for months and years, and allows the wretched sinner in this case to drink alt the bittor dregs of the cup be chooses, and to bring down its dreadful effects upon his helpless wife and children. Way, we may go further back. For all this misery is primarily caused by a poiaon which another man supplies. He deals it out, a daily portion of death, and, while his own head is sheltered and his own fireside ■nfe from its effects, he is permitted by Providence to go on for years, sending these streams of misery into many families all around him. Why does not God intprpose to stop this vice and suffering? Why does He not shelter this wretched wife, and warm and feed tbese perishing but innocent children — innocent at least of the cause of their misery ? Why doe» He not, by a change in the constitution of nature, destroy the possibility of making „ a poison to excruciating in its effects ? There can b8 but one answer. He sses that it i», on the whole, for the best that man should be left free to Bin if he will, and that the nature of •in should be shown, by allowing it to work out undisturbed its own awful results to all connected with the sinner. These plans of His government He has the hrmaeaH to carry out, though every year they cut down thousands of wretch«d wives and starved children. The man who chooses to send firebrands, arrows, and death around him has, under the government of God, an opportunity to do bo. The door is wide open, and the/helpless and innocent wife and children must take the consequences. j3ut, oh ! thou forlorn and broken-heattsd mother, be of good courage. Thou art not forgotten, though fixed laws must take their course. Thou ahalfc have a hearing in good time." God permit* misery only that man m*y rid the earth of the evil under which itgroaus. Surely it is to man's honour and glory to work out all the evil he know*. Why— oh, why — are men so singularly unwilling to reform law* th^t press hard on woman ? Yet it ii not against the lawa themselves that we protest, but against the abu«e of them. W« tamely suffer a social slavery to mar God* f»ir creation irons than American slavery. I* the black slave nearer and dearer to the heart of God than the whit* slave, that it was right to squander io much blood and treasure to k fre« the negro, yet blear England's fair flag with this home slavery of heart and life still more degrading, seeing its viotims are only weak women and children ? Is the demon, Drink, lets cruel than " Legrea" ? Nay ; wt hay«. hundreds and thousands of " Legrees * ia these sunny isles as in every land, and yet we art unwilling to look thi» crying eril in the f ace, in order to wipe ont of existence this desp shame. Try— at least, r try— whether drunkenness is capable of cure, * treated as disease. If cured of thig vice, the

'eat of you . j know of QM { ,'«od man ia Auckland who h« long .ad anxiously «Bked hovr b«.fc to shield wife «nd uudrenfrom the tyranny of huab.nd and Men do not rush *t reform with a yomana hetdlonf haste. Only l»fc these tuo*ghta amlt into aome hearts, and good will I am sure, result.— l am, *c, ' ~— , Ml | : A Woman.