MODERN ENGLISH ATROCITIES.—THEIR REMEDY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 214, 1 June 1877, Page 12

MODERN ENGLISH ATROCITIES.— THEIR RE ME D Y.

England is proud of her wealth, her commerce, ships, and machinery of all kinds. Yet these are things " after which the heathen seek" and ever have sought. Amidst all her splendour and material prosperity there is, as shown by statistics, an amount of popular destitution, ignorance, and of vice in its most revolting form in modern England, such as may well excite the pity and hoiror of all the nations of the world, civilized and barbarian. Much of thi3 misery exists among the very class to whose skill and industry England owes the greater part of her material prosperity — I mean the workmen; and the greater part of this misery and degradation springs from the sale of an article, the revenue from which tends to enrich the Government, more probably than the revenue from any other source — I mean alcoliolic drink, of course. The richer the Government of England becomes in this way, the more degraded and brutalized her people become. The pen of an able and philanthropic member of Parliament has recently described a scene in which the horrors of the Bulgarian

atrocities are, if possible, surpassed, and which occurred in a public-house among the workingmen of England. The Turkish ruffians destroyed the lives of women and babes in the heat and excitement of a rebellion. The victims of their demoniacal fury were aliens in blood and religion, and some of their relatives or co-religionists at least had given provocation. But the English monsters wreclc their fury on tlieir own innocent wives under circumstances and in a manner which makes one's very blood curdle with horror to read of them ; and what is more, this has been done in the presence of men who have coolly looked on as the pitiless and inhuman monster was committing the atrocity. Scenes of a similar kind, we are led to infer from this writer, are not rare in England. Where is the remedy for these miseries ? It is plain the Anglican Church with its enormous wealth, and the Protestant sectaries with all their money and zeal fail to reach the root of the evil. The well-directed efforts of the Catholic Church alone can stay this moral plague in England. There she has free course and protection under a religious and just sovereign — and the natural disposition of Englishmen is good, though corrupted and degraded by selfishness in the past. — Laic.