THE DANGERS OF RESPECTABILITY.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1234, 16 February 1878, Page 3

THE DANGERS OF RESPECTABILITY.

(From the “ World/’)

Lectures or addresses delivered by women have not yet become acclimatised in England. Yet women, if they speak at all, usually speak well. In America, which in its power of “producing something new” is to the moderns what Africa was to the ancients, female speakers are tolerably common. There is a dramatic element in the American character which loves display and seeks excitement. One of the most celebrated of American oratresses is now in London, and has given two specimens of her style and mode of thought to English audiences. Allowance being made for various tricks of manner and Transatlanticisms distasteful to our insular prejudices, as well as a pervading tone of religious mysticism, her remarks are not quite devoid of common sense. Mrs Woodhull considers society in the present day closely resembles that of the period of decadence of the Eoman Empire, or of other nations who have died the ;death of shame after having luxuriated in a life of corruption and selfsatisfaction. She sees before us a career of misery and ruin unless we apply, not slender palliatives, but drastic remedies, to the very root of the evil. Her great panacea for the ills of humanity is the influence of intelligent women. Woman has gradually raised herself from the position of a despised slave to the attitude of a noble partner of the good man’s life. Mrs Woodhull strikes the keynote when she says a nation’s prosperity depends upon its morality, and its morality depends upon its women. The child imbibes more than a share of its mother’s idiosyncrasy and good or bad qualities; it is her very self. No after-life or teaching can efface the memory of a mother’s love or of a mother’s wise and tender foresight. It may be doubted whether men will ever agree with the fair American homilist in demanding the purity of men as an equivalent for the chastity of women. The latter have been kind enough to grant men the privilege of indulging their passions, and Mrs Woodhull’s warmth and eloquence will hardly avail to cure men of their belief in their right of monopoly to laxity of morals.

The great judge of the present day, who rules men’s lives and terrifies their consciences, is respectability. Respectability, like the temple where the vestal virgins served, must not be violated, or the intruder will have to pay the price of ostracism from society. The middle level of respectability conduces neither to high virtues nor violent immorality. It is a low level, and, like mediocrity in general, not inclined to be aggressive. But while we complacently nurse this phantom of respectability in our midst, sin and crime flourish and fill our gaols and our lunatic asylums. Propriety demands that we should never mention delicate subjects to our sons, and thus a kind father or a loving mother calmly sends out the youth to a life of temptation and trial without hampering him with a word of advice or showing a particle of sympathy for his possible weaknesses and failings. Fathers who have “sown their wild-oats ” are ashamed to mention the matter before their children, and prefer, as they say, to leave the young to buy their experience. Now such a theory as this is a hollow and dangerous sham; for every one knows evil exists, yet every one pretends to ignore it. The miserable part of such tawdry sentiment is that Divine laws are inexorable, and meanwhile every sin brings its own punishment. The one pauper, who was proved to have been the ancestor of four hundred other paupers, each leading a more abject and miserable life than the last, is a lesson which should be pondered by all of us. The responsibility of parents is quite as large and as important a doctrine as the duties of children, who often have little or nothing but an inheritance of sin and suffering for which to thank their parents. And not only have we to bear the consequences of our sins, but of our own errors as well; and the mistakes of nations are written in blood. Sanitary measures disregarded, social laws evaded, moral duties shirked—all bring their Nemesis, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, sometimes in the burning present, sometimes hidden in the womb of the future, but as certainly as

It is good for us occasionally to have the veil of decorum torn down before our eyes, and to see ourselves as others see us. It is impossible to legislate a nation into morality, and probably Mrs Woodhull is right in her notion that mothers alone have the happiness and security of their children in their hands. Criminals beget criminals, and insanity is hereditary. These are facts. The question is how to deal with them. No man can bo great or good who does not in the outset of life start with an ideal before him; and it is therefore of "paramount importance that the ideal given to young men, fostered in them from their youth, and encouraged by habit and association, should bo a high one. Strength of character may be drummed into a man if it'is not already inherent, and the respect for women and for whatever is weak and helpless is a decided ingredient in strength of character. What delicacy of mind can be expected from a man who has been brought up to look on his mother either as a patient beast of burden made to bear kicks and cuffs and abuse, or else as the heartless doll of fashion or luxury ? As is the father so is the son, and the woman’s good influence is merged in an abyss of hereditary brutality. For, after all, vice is but a deep-spread egotism, the canker of nations and families. The difficulties that beset statesmen in making laws, and philanthropists in working out their problems of charity, arise from egotism ; the selfishness of the masses, the absence of sympathy of the individual, —these are the causes of poverty, of niggardliness, of hardness in every shape. Self-indulgence presupposes a want of care for all others except the pampered ego, who must have his pleasure or his luxuries at any price. Those, therefore, who preach morality ought to go to the fountain-head, and teach ns to do to others as wo would they should do unto us. Yiewed in this light the American lecturer has certainly truth on her side ; but truth filters slowly ; only, when once it has been tasted, it is sought after eagerly.