LARRIKINISM IN MELBOURNE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 841, 31 May 1878, Page 3

LARRIKINISM IN MELBOURNE.

With reference to the above “ John I’orrybingle,” in the Molbournc Weekly Times writes as follows : “ The larrikin nuisance is a bitter satire upon our boasted capacity to preserve law and order. Passing through Stephcn-strcet the other day, I was witness to a rough and tumble light, in which four policemen and twenty bestial larrikins participated. Now, in my young days, I went down to the sea in ships, and 1 can conscientiously say that I heard some choice swearing in my time, but nothing so unutterably lilthy revolting, and horrible, have I ever heard from human tongue, as the obscenities which were uttered by the smooth shaven, greasy, hang-dog scoundrels who surged around the police officers as they fought with their prisoners. Every gesture, movement, look, anil utterance suggested dirt, olfal, the semirings of moral gutters. Oaf! wo shall have work with those wretches, who are horn for the gallows or the prison —and we shall have to fhauk ourselves. Surely it were hotter to visit upon these animals'the severest punishments tho law can inflict. Would it not be well to keep them on low diet, sweat their wickedness from their hones with work and flog them heartily at given periods ? Humanity suggests that the bitterest punishment would be the highest justice, not alone to society, but towards those ruffians who offend its laws so wantonly. No mercy should bo shown the larrikin in whoso character there aro features unspeakably revolting, and brutal. Panders and bullies for loose women, plunderers of drunken men, with no single trait to relievo the darkness of their moral being, they' arc not to be dealt with as one would deal with the highwayman, or the bold housebreaker. The man who owns courage has other virtues behind it. But tho coward, the pilferer, and sponger on harlotry, is a beast, who is incapable of reform, save through the medium of his appetites and his susceptibility to physical paiu. Slave the larrikin, work him as you woulp, and Hog him as you might a bullock. That’s my tip, Sir, and you’ll not find a better.”