THE GLOBE. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1880. LARRIKINISM.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2120, 9 December 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1880. LARRIKINISM.

A late display of larrikinism on the part of certain Melbourne roughs has occasioned a somewhat warm passage of arms in the Yictorian Legislature. The display referred to was as follows: —A mob of some thirty larrikins entered the Yictoria Hotel, Hoddle street, Collingwood, and demanded drink. Being refused, they commenced to threaten the person in charge of the bar, and held possession of the house for some time, in the meantime conducting themselves in a most disgraceful manner. On two constables arriving they were attacked in a most vicious manner by the mob, and would have been most severely ill-used had not two more policemen arrived on the scene. A serious fight then took place, in which one or two of the larrikins drew their knives to stab the officers. The mob then adjourned to an open space, and commenced stoning the police, and one of the latter received such a severe wound that it was feared his skull was fractured. Finally throe of the roughs were captured. In the Legislature Mr. Service referred to this disgraceful scene, and asked if the Government would consider the propriety of proposing soma more stringent measures than at present existed for suppressing such outrages, and suggested the introduction of the lash. Mr Berry replied warmly, and coincided with the remarks

o£ his interrogator as to the feelings which were experienced by every right-minded citizen with respect to the attack, but ho urged that until the magistrates were compelled in some manner to administer the law as it was, it would be useless to enact any additional legislation. If he were assured of the support of the House ho would not hesitate to summarily dismiss any Magistrate who failed to perform the duty required of him by society in the administration of its laws. The remark was loudly cheered from both sides of the House. Sir John O’Shannassy expressed the opinion that it would be useless to adopt any repressive measures against the youth of the colony, who were yearly becoming more criminal, as was shown by the statistics, until the cause of the depravity, which he insinuated to bo the present Education Act, was altered. Mr Francis protested against such an assertion, and submitted that the education system had no right to be saddled with responsibilities which clearly did not belong to it. The discussion did not last long, but what there was of it was hot and strong, and an unmistakeable feeling was expressed that the time had arrived for the adoption of vigorous measures for the suppression of the ruffianly tendencies which had of late been exhibited.

That the opponents of tho present educational system should lay at its door all the evils with which the State is afflicted is natural enough, hut it cannot he said that they have over attempted to prove their case ; and this not because they have not the will or the opportunity. For instance, there are the London schools. About half the juvenile population at tho schools in the English metropolis are educated at Board Schools and and the other half at denominational schools. No attempt has ever been made to show that the pupils at the former do not in every respect make as good members of society as those who have been brought up at the latter, and yet, had there been any ground for such an assertion, it is quite certain that the comparison would have been instituted, for the School Board has been in operation now for a number of years. Moreover, larrikinism is not confined to communities where secular primary education only is in vogue. From those old days when, at Oxford, the High street was garnished with the corpses of the students who had been hung for cattle stealing, hut whose religious education had been peculiarly well seen to, up to the present day, larrikinism has never been, and indeed never will he, sheeted home to the effect of secular education. For the circumstances under which secular education is started in a community must be remembered. The State never in any way cries down religious education, but it says: —“ Owing to the different opinions held on religious subjects by different persons, we cannot undertake to teach it in our schools, hut must look to the parents and tho ministers of the different denominations to see to it.” And the majority—by whom this proposal has necessarily been sanctioned, because it has passed into law—enter into a tacit understanding with the Government that as regards the religious education of their children, they will do what they can in the matter. The majority, he it understood, enter into this understanding, and there is a decided breach of contract if they do carry their part of the programme out in its entirety. No—we fancy search must be made deeper among the foundations of any society to get at the root of this same plague of larrikinism. It is a curious fact that in those places where wealth has grown the most rapidly, there larrikinism most abounds. San Francisco and Melbourne are at present unenviahly notorious in this matter. In most countries where the monied classes have reached their present position only through a long course of years, and where the economics of society at largo are placed on a firm basis, the dignity of labor is an established creed, reverence for established authority is part of most home educations, and modesty in youth is looked upon as a virtue and not as a blemish. But where wealth has been rapidly acquired sharpness in trade is the qualification that is praised above all others, and the child draws in from its earliest days tenets that are not calculated to raise its future opinion of all that is great and good, in contradistinction to all that is clever and successful. It is this faculty for bowing down before the successful man and, it may be, the “ shoddyite ” that, amongst other things, poisons the mind of the rising generation in such communities. Larrikinism will, probably, on closer inspection, he found to be intimately bound up with the warp and woof of the basis on which any particular society may happen to have been founded.