SALA ON SWEARING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7403, 11 August 1885, Page 6

SALA ON SWEARING.

Mr. G. A. Sala contributes the following letter on swearing to the Melbourne Argus : ——" I have read and re-read with much interest, and, I may add, considerable amusement, an article in your issue of the 25th inst. on the subject of bad language in these colonies ; and I should be very much obliged if you would permit me to place on record, as a cosmopolitan observer of men and manners of many years' standing, my experience of what at home is familiarly known as 'Billingsgate.' TVithout, I hope, laying myself open to the imputation of being vain, 1 can say in this instance, experto crtde Oeorgio. I was born in an age when, in England, everybody swore fearfully, from royalty downwards. All the sons of George 111. swore like 'troopers,' and one at least of his grandsons continues the practice. So far as I am personally concerned I have not the slightest shame in confessing—on the verge of 60 years of ago—that I can swear with fluency in five languages and with tolerable volubility in eight; and as regards my experience of evil speech, I aver that I have never visited a country of which the natives did not Bwear abominably. On the score of blasphemy the prize should, among the Latin races, be assuredly awarded to the Italians— highly artistic, poetic, and musical people. Next come the Spaniards ; while, as regards obscenity, the award should be equally divided between the Italians and the French. The Germans swear roundly, and utter many profane ejaculations, but they are chary of using filthy expressions. With respect to the remarks of the superfine American reviewer quoted at the outset of your editorial, I may just incidentally mention that the Americans are a highly diverting but exceedingly hypocritical people. It is all very well to accuse the ' lower strata of society ' —where, I should like to know, in an essentially democratic community are ' the lower strata of society ' to be found?—of ' breathing an atmosphere of blasphemy from their birth,' and of being 4 proficient in the language of execration and malediction learned at the parental hearth or den;' but it so happens that a conspicuous fact in so-called American humour is irreverence in the use of sacred names or things, and that at least one-half of the quaintest and drollest American ' yarns,' or stories related, not by the ' lower strata of society,' but by educated and even accomplished Americans, are simply unprintable by reason of their blasphemous forra of expression or suggestiveness. Ami blasphemous suggestiveue«s is '20 times worse than merely foul language, to which in most instances the old aphorism Rill apply—

' licmiilast words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense.'

On the other hand, thero is a great deal of sense—of perverted sense—in the indecent or irreverent ' yarns ' which pass current for humour in the country of the superfine reviewer. Touching bad language in Australia, I should be deaf indeed were I to ignore the fact that profanity and foulness of speech are far more prevalent on this side the equator than they should be. lat once admit that you cannot ' walk the streets, or pass a knot of idlers on the pavement, without being the unwilling auditor of the most revolting ribaldry, mixed up with sacred names in association with emphatic curses and passionate appeals to the Supreme Being. ' Just so ; but have Australians a monopoly of such passionate appeals ! How about the ' Mon Dieu ! ' with ejaculations of which even a refined French lady does not hesitate to interlard her speech ! How about the ' Ach Gott!' and ' Ach Himmell' of the sedate Germans? Two wrongs do not constitute a right ; and I will not seek to extenuate the Australian habit of swearing by dwelling on the ineffably blackguard language common not only among the roughs of London and other great English cities, but on every racecourse, in every stable-yard, on every cabstand, in every market at home. A block of carriages in a Loudon street always provides a flood of foul language, to which ladies and children are compelled to listen ; while a slanging match between two bargees on the towing-path of a canal is a liberal education in invective, impiety, and indecency. With all this it is but very rarely at home that any attempt is made to put down bad language by the strong arm of the law. There is an almost obsolete law on the statute book against profanity, cursing, and swearing, and, at lengthy intervals, some fussy old Aldermanic justice will win a little transient notoriety for himself by fining an offender 5s for using had language. But in this country I have rarely opened a daily newspaper without reading that your stipendiary magistrates have amerced male or female delinquents for using profane or indecent language in penalties which I can but look upon as being of ferocious severity. It is true that the majority of your foulmouthed offenders seem to be prosperous enough to pay the fine of £2, £3, and even £5 fine inflicted on them, whereas the vast majority of our roughs would have to go to gaol, owing to their inability to disburse even so much as ass fine. You ask, in your editorial, whether a systematic effort should not be made 'in the church, in the schoolroom, and in the police court, for, if not, the suppression, at any rate the diminution of this disgusting practice.' It is obvious that every olorgymau is bound to preach against swearing, and that any schoolmaster who knows his duty is bound to punish a boy who swears. But boys do not swear in church or at school. "They swear out of doors, and may I be allowed deferentially to ask whether the habit of using bad language in this country is not in a great measure due to the circumstance that Australian youths are very much less under parental control than is the case at home ; that here unchecked precocity is the rule rather than the exception, and that in young, prosperous, exuberant Australia, the bonds of domestic discipline have been relaxed to an extent which would appear incredible to those who have never quitted staid old England? As for the Police Court remedy for venial offences, you may think it very presumptuous in me to say so, but I cannot help expressing my opinion that you have a great deal too much policecourt remedy as it is. You have so few civil or political dissensions, you have so few radical reforms to struggle for that—ln ray humble thinkingyou make mountains out of molehills to be adjudicated in your police Courts. Government by polica is normally one of the most abhorrent forms of Government ; and it inevitably goes hand in hand with what we call at home ' grandmotherly government'—the well-meant but unwise attempt violently to coerce human nature into being sober, moral, devout, civilly spoken. ' Grandmotherly government' has another consequence. It surely encourages the spy and the delator. It as surely converts the policeman into a counterpart of the sbirro and the alguagil. No doubt foul language in the streets is a wretohed nuisance. So, by the way, iB the Australian habit of midnight whistling. But would it not be better to trust to the influences of education and culture rather than to those of the policeman and the magistrate to bring about the gradual effacement of the evil ? Depend upon it, if the tendenoy of Australian legislation continues to be the conversion of petty misdeeds into criminal offences, you will ere long be endowed with a code as unworkably afflictive as the enacted, but never enforce, Blue Laws of Connecticut, and you will form a community akin to the town in Now England in the eighteenth century described by Ned Ward, and of which, at some time or another, every inhabitant—man, woman, and child— had baen publicly whipped by the beadle.