JUVENILE SMOKING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 130, 9 April 1879, Page 2

JUVENILE SMOKING.

The Bishop of Manchester (says the Pall Mall Gazette) appears to have turned his attention from the moralities of the Eastern Question and the vices of opera bouffe to anothei' matter of less magnitude perhaps than either, He lias written a letter againt the evils of tobacco-smoking amoung young people: and at the meeting held in Manchester the othei'jday this lettor, together with similar communications from Dean Close,'Mr B, Whitworth, M.P. and others, was read and considered. After due discussion, the Rev. C. A. Davis moved Dr Ledivard seconded the following resolution: —"That this meeting, impressed with a deep sense of danger with which the drinking and smoking customs of society surround British youth, earnestly • calls the attention of the school boards, the masters of our public, endowed, and days schools, and the school book publishers, to the necessities which exists for including in the ordinary course of education some simple medical teaching on the nature of narcotics, and showin? the ine- ' vitable injury which results to nations and individuals from all narcotic indulgence." This resolution, it seems, was carried; and though wo may have our doubts as to the effect which the" simple medical teaching" will have upon the young persons who are subjected to it—more especially if it overshoots the mark as much as most " medical teaching" upon the evils of tobacco is generally found to do—the proposal is at any rate a harmless one. But what are we to think of the subsequent resolution in favor of sending a " petition to Parliament embodying the views of the meeting, and urging'the desirability of appointing a Royal Commission to inquire into the effects of juvenile smoking?" We had thought that the "spelling reform" agitation had been the means of ■ sounding the lowest depths of adult silliness when it led to the demand for a i Royal Commission for the relief of the N 'early difficulties of "little Hodge." But a yet lower depth of fatuous fussiness is revealed by the proposal, which is to bo seriously urged in a memorial to the Home Secretary, that Parliament should appoint a Royal Commission to consider a matter which might form an appropriate subject of discussion at a "mother's meeting."