THE DILKE SCANDAL.

Poverty Bay Independent, Volume I, Issue 48, 12 September 1885, Page 2

THE DILKE SCANDAL.

That immorality of the grossest kind is not confined to the lower orders has often been proved beyond a doubt, and it is little wonder that Mary-Jane, the parlour maid, goes crooked, when she sees the Lady Anastasia Aurelia setting her such an example. Nor is it to be wondered at that Bill Smith, the grocer’s assistant, should endeavor to get up a liaison with his employer’s daughter, when the highest in the land set him such a “ straight tip.” The point of demarkation comes in only where Lord Algernon Fitz-Snook’s money enables him to often hush up his little mistakes ; or the Lady Anastasia Aurelia can get her physician to order her abroad at a critical time. Whereas poor Mary-Jane and Bill Smith must, in slang phrase, “ stand the racket,” and either brazen it out or fall into shame or ruin. Very often sometimes, however, even Sir Ponsonby de Pumpkins can't wriggle out of his little entanglement without the loss of some of his skin and a scandalum magnm. And so it appears that the Honorable (!) Sir Charles Dilke, Late Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, has been caught and dropped on to by the irate husband of Mrs Donald Crawford. His preference for meddling with “foreign affairs ” has mixed him up badly in an affair quite foreign to his office under the Crown. Poor Dilke, however d:lke-\\.y he may have handled other foreign affairs, it seems likely that he won't come out of this one wifh clean hands. Verily it is little wonder, as we have said, that the “ lower five ” go crooked, when the “ upper ten ” set such an awful example. And the trouble is that where one of these nasty cases is I found out, thousands go on undis-1 covered, or, for the sake of pride or pocket, unannounced to the world. Oh ! where are we all going to ?- -Spectator.