IMMACULATE ENGLAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 434, 5 August 1881, Page 7

IMMACULATE ENGLAND.

The Birmingham Daily Post referring to the ever increasing crime of England, says : — At home our increasing barbarism seems to be di awing us nearer and nearer to the darkness predicted by Mother Shipton as destined to envelop us at the end of the next three years. No English paper appears without an article headed " State of Ireland, " wherein the most serious accounts of burning and shooting and stabbing are set forth with all due attention to sensational detail", sure to produce the household thanksgiving at the English hearth, " Thank Cod, we are not like unto these men 1" Now, supposing the Irish papers were to give their readers a corresponding daily column on the " State of England, " would they not find an ample equivalent of crime ? Have we not, to begin with, the late prize fight on Epsom Downs, wherein two men, who had never fought before, were excited to try their skill against each other. The fight continued until both men were so severely bruised, ana one of them so completely battered about the face that, according to the expression of an eye-witness, " he was carried from the field senseless and featureless." Next comes the great "punching" case at Liverpool, where a poor fellow called " Steeple Jack " was kicked to death by a band of roughs, while men stood by smoking and looking on without affording that help to the victim which he had sought to bestow on the girl his assailants had been creully ill-treating. Can there be in all the annals of brutality a worse method of attack than this "punching, " which is not only accepted but approved in Lancashire? The blows of an iron-tipped clog on the ribs while the victim lies helpless on the ground — a kick or two upon the side of the head— and life is extinct before the assailant ha 3 lime to repeat the blow. Then comes the " state of London," which would make an interesting column of itself. George Reed, a labourer, is convicted of having beaten his wife with violence ; then, after throwing her to the ground, of breaking a paraffin lamp over her prostrate form with the intention of setting her on fire. Fortunately for the wife she must have been a bad manager, for nowhere could a match be found, so that compensation had to be sought in flinging her out of the window. This was an easy task, for George Reed a sturdy, hulking, beer-swollen fellow, while his wife, starved, and beaten, and emaciated, must have weighed but a feather in his lusty arms. It was the affair of a moment. Out flew the woman, whose convulsive clutching of her husband's sleeve and frantic cries for mercy were of no avail — and she lay smashed and bleeding on the pavement below 1 Then we have another case of a hatchet whereby a wife's skull was split in twain — '• exactly as you would split a cocoa nut," said one of the witnesses. And as to the childtorturing and murder, the examples ars too numerous to be quoted. Nay, even the poor animals come in for their share of the evil influence of that original sin which, according to Calvin, no men can resist if once he allows it to take hold upon his mind ; for three horses grazing in a" field were frightfully hacked and cut by some villains not long ago and vitriol poured into their wounds. No reason can be given for the cruelty save that the owner was " rather unpopular in the neighbourhood." Now, would not all these examples sufficiently warrant the laish reporters in giving a regular account of the " state of England," even without the agrarian reasons for committing the outrages which comes under our notice every day? Dr. Mitchell's simple questing of " What is civilisation?" becomes more difficult to answer as education becomes more general. The late Mr. Ellis, whose sole care was for the boys, was wont to say, " Real civilisation b as no presentit must for ever remain a thing of the future."