Manners and Morals.

VERY general complaints have recently been made that manners and morals are becoming more lax among all classes of society. There is a freedom of utterance and treatment in the language and literature of the day which is said to contrast unfavorably with the past, and to indicate symptoms of incipient national degeneracy and decay. A few weeks ago an essayist in the Pall Mall Gazette making some "excuses for pessimism," broadly stated it as an undoubted fact that "in public amusements, in favorite works of fiction, and in the most recently popularised forms of periodical literature, a decided change for the worse is observable." Undoubtedly there is exaggeration in an assertion so sweeping and unqualified as this. Had as many of the public amusements of the day may be, it would be hard to convince us that they are worse than the bull-baiting and prize fighting of our grand fathers' time; stupid and vulgar as are some of the burlesques and music-hall songs of the present time, they are certainly not so immoral as the plays of Wycherly and Congreve; and the best novels of contemporary literature are head and shoulders superior in taste and morality to the works of Fielding and Smollett or the teeming inanities of the Minerva Press. Nevertheless there is much truth in the assertion that deterioration is at work; and the eagerness and minuteness with which scandalous stories are reproduced and amplified in some of the public prints, as well as the vulgarity and obscenity with which so much of common speech is interlarded, are apt to make us pause before we boast overmuch of our nineteenth century civilization and progress. Within the last few years there have sprung up in London and elsewhere a class of newspapers which for want of a better name are called "society" papers. They professed at first to be "written by gentlemen for gentlemen," but if the revelations which have recently been made in London courts of law count for anything, it is very clear that some of them have fallen into inferior hands, and are conducted with a very inadequate idea of the responsibilities of modern journalism. In order to render these prints piquant and saleable a rechauffe of club gossip and backstairs rumors is weakly presented; inuendoes and suggestions spiteful and malicious are set a rolling; scraps of dinner talk strung together by gentlemen's gentlemen, and morsels of whispered naughtinesses overheard by sharp-witted Abigails are dressed up and presented as a faithful reflex of the sayings and doings of the Upper Ten. The demand having been created, these " society" journals find their imitators of a lower rank, who hawk their unlicensed broadsheets in the public streets, and who do not hesitate to invent and vilify that they may obtain notoriety and increase circulation. Two libel cases which have recently been "decided in London may be cited as illustrations of what we mean. We certainly do not propose to go into their details or demerits, but the mention of the main feature of them will serve to show the hind of garbage which is now got up for sale and accepted by many as a full, true, and particular account of the kind of transactions which are common in the highest circles. The name of Mr. Langtry is pretty well-known as that of one of the acknowledged beauties of London society. Casting about for game at which he might profitably launch his envenomed shafts the editor of Town Talk for six successive weeks treated his readers with sensational paragraphs, consisting not merely of insinuations but of positive assertions of infamous conduct, in which the Prince of Wales and other notabilities were implicated, and which it was asserted would form the immediate subject of enquiry before the Divorce Court. On being threatened with legal proceedings for libel, the defendant, so far from expressing regret for his misconduct or discontinuing his assaults, was proved to have " rubbed his hands, and said, I hope there may be half a dozen actions for libel, that thereby the sale of the paper may be in creased." Evidently he was, as the Judge put it, " pandering to the depraved and prurient tastes of those who could be weak enough and debased enough to buy and read the publication," and certainly he richly deserved the too lenient sentence that was passed upon him. Less wicked and more amusing, but equally libellous, was the attack which the same editor made in the same print on Mrs. Cornwallis West. This lady, the rival of Mrs. Langtrey for the golden apple awarded to the greatest beauty, seams to have been greatly exercised in her mind be cause Mrs. Langtry's photographs sold more readily in the printsellers' shops than her own. Very vigorously, if also very untruthfully, the editor describes the lady's daily routine of business and pleasure; in the morning at home only to photographers, five or six of whom will take her likeness in ten or a dozen different attitudes and costumes ; in the afternoon, after a substantial luncheon circumstantially described, driving to the various printsellers, and drawing a handsome income from commissions on the sale of portraits exposed alongside of half-naked actresses and wholly nude Zulus. In this case also the adventurous editor was convicted and sentenced. The fact is that journals are now to be found cultivating for profit this prurient field, and readers are to he found who discover a low delight in gloating over these highly spiced productions. For the middle and upper classes these prints have become, what the Police News is to the lower, and one has only to look in the windows of some of the shops even in Adelaide, where that print is exposed for sale on arrival of the mail, to see how eagerly its suggestive pictures and sensational letterpress are regarded by al fresco students. Closely connected with this spreading taste for scandalous and impure literature is a growing use of filthy and obscene and blasphemous language, which no doubt to some extent arises out of and is fostered by it. Even in the intercourse of some drawing-rooms latitudes and familiarities of converse are ventured on now which would not have been tolerated a few years ago. In general intercourse, too, things are said and read and done and witnessed nowadays "by persons of both sexes, and in classes claiming to be the most refined, which in a former age would have been reserved for the sight, hearing, perusal, or practice of one sex alone, and perhaps not the most fastidious of that sex," and no one whose avocations lead them much into the streets after nightfall needs to be told how the eye is saddened and the ear pained with the sights and sounds which meet him at every well-frequented corner. It is certainly quite time that public attention should be called to this monstrous evil, and steps taken to mitigate or remove it. It is an evil not 'confined to' large towns merely, though of course most rampant in these; and though we have no reason for asserting that Adelaide is exceptionally bad in this respect, we have certainly no ground for pluming ourselves on the thought that we are in any great measure better than our neighbors. Expressions, of which it may be charitably hoped that the full meaning; is not knows, are heard from the lips of mere boys, and not from what we call larrikins only, but from those whose educational training and home advantages have been such as to warrant the expectation of better things. A foolish notion seems to grow up that such language is manly, and a horrible rivalry in profane words and dirty jests is too commonly indulged in. Side by side with the "three R's" of our school education we have the " three B's" of our street training, and as it will not do to let both of them grow together until the harvest, it becomes us to make earnest effort to eradicate the noxious weed in the name of whatsoever is pure and lovely and of good report. An appeal might very properly he made to the common sense and better feelings of our rising generation in this matter. What earthly good does it serve, where is either the point or the wit of designating every thing as " blooming," or ensanguined, or worse? "Where is the manliness or benefit of overloading every remark with profane appeals to the Deity, or with double-edged allusions of unmitigated blackguardism and filth ? We trust that the young especially will remember the words of Tillotson— " Profit or pleasure there is none in swearing, nor any thing in men's natural tempers to incite them to it. For though some men pour out oaths so freely as if they came naturally from them, yet surely no man is born of a swearing constitution." If reason will not avail to mitigate the evil, then, so far as its display in the public streets and parks is concerned, appeal must be made to constituted authority. People cannot be made moral by Acts of Parliament, or by-laws of corporations, it is true, but the authorities can at least take care that they do not obtrude their misdeeds in such a way as to offend and outrage others. It is discreditable to a civilised, not to say christian community, that such things should continue unchecked. Women whose honest avocations call them to pass through the streets after sundown have a right to feel that they are free from insult to ear and eye; young people who may require to do errands have a right to be protected from premature corruption; and well-disposed citizens generally are entitled to expect and claim reasonable immunity from wanton and senseless exhibitions of impurity and profanity. The by laws of every corporation ought to be so framed as to give powers to the authorities as a last resource to prosecute and punish such misconduct, and these powers where possessed should not be permitted to remain in abeyance. A smart fine or two inflicted on the older and more responsible offenders, coupled with the notoriety and disgrace of public exposure, would do much to clear our streets of this patent evil; but, more hopeful than any official interference, we trust to the good sense of the people to discountenance and abandon a bad habit which, it maybe, is as often the result of thoughtlessness and vicious example, as of deliberate and confirmed wickedness.

 The South Australian Advertiser 22 December 1879,