Extracts.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 521, 31 October 1857, Page 3

Extracts.

SINS OF THE UPPER TEN THOUSAND

_ The Rev. S. G. Osborne, in one of those telling letters on social topics which he occasionally publishes in the 'Times,'has made a slashing attack on the " sins of respectability." Says the outspoken parson (who is not a bit too proud to recognise a Dissenting labourer in the same field): —

"Ad nauseam we hear of the degraded moral condition of the 'lower orders.' I have no doubt but the month of May will at Exeter hall and St. Stephen's furnish us with fresh moans and groans on this everlasting subject. | We shall again hear what the most eloquent of j the educated classes can bring forward to de- ' nounce and deplore in the character of that class which has no mission to preach, to the rich and well-taught, which has little or nothing to do with the choice of those who make the laws which rule. I am not going to say one word against any who are really in earnest to better the moral condition of the so-called ' lower orders.' May God speed them in. their work, but may He at the same time bless them with a little more consistency ! Who is so blind that he cannot see how every class is morally affected by the habits of the class immediately above it? If the higher steps of a staircase are very foul you may clean your feet as you descend, but you will scarcely leave the last step uncontaminated. Why will not the orators of the platform and the Senate look straight before them and around them, rather than for ever be looking downwards ? Why make Africa and Cripplegate, foreign heathen and home moral destitution, the perpetual burden of the evangelizing, moralizing song, and forget the 'squares,' the 'parks' the ' villas,' the Stock Exchange, the casinos, the ' turf/ the Traviata ? A good deal is said and written about the Church of the upper classes wanting bold, eloquent preachers ; would those classses bear being told the truths that ought io tell on them had the Church its corps of Spurgeons to eloquently and perseveringly ring out each Sabbath those truths in their ears ? I have no hesitation in avowing my conviction that one of the most powerful classes in this country —that class which does read and can observe—that class raised a few degrees above the labourer, but still a few degrees below what is called the middle class—marks, in a spirit which broods mischief, the hypocritical inconsistency which is-for ever on the stoop to pity, patronize and amend, but which shuns that view on its own level which would afford a wider and more urgent field for amendment. Let this s3 Tstem of attack on the depravity of those who ; have been reared to know no better—who, if I they had known better, could have scarce survived their rearing—go on at the hands of those who have never known want, except through extravagance; who have had all teaching, whose j-outh was protected from contamination ; but who —adult—seek it, nay, openly seem to glory in the pursuit, and a day of reckoning will i come which will shake our social system to its foundation. How many a man has been transported for life for offences against property which are mere 'orchard robbery'compared with the deliberate dishonest appropriation of the j money of others which so distinguishes the j titled, educated, sometimes religious swindler of ! the present day ! I scarce know a crime now that does shock ' society,' although ' society' sadly laments per platform the growth of crime among the lower orders. In an age of the most wanton extravagance, productive of all the moral deterioration money difficulty ever begets, we hear ceaseless lamentation over the extravagance of the classes who receive on Saturday whaj; will hardly pay their maintenance up to the Friday night! I can recollect the time when the tailor's bill of a gentleman was. the thermometer to tell the world the height of his expenditure, as compared with the reality of what he bad to spend. If lam to believe some who tntist know, the money owing to miliners and dressmakers by ' society' betrays a state of things beyond all tailor fprecedent. Yet there is a great cry for more of those ' nice' preachers who do, like dear Mr. M , tell one such good home truths' Honest society, Sir, owed you much when some time since you denounced that open pollution of the stage which is again revived. We have now the aid of fluent evangelical bishops—men chosen, it is said, by the the pious for their piety; we have our public men for ever acting the part of provincial lecturers, telling us benighted rurals that ' once open books to the eyes of our mechanics, and the intellectual will overcome the sensual; the paths of science will pierce through to forsake the paths of mere animal pleasure.' There are no such congregations as those attracted to certain penitentiaries by their eloquent chaplains ; this I have witnessed, and witnessing I knew some around me who could pay tribute to ' language' in tears on the Sunday, and yet x'eturn to 'society,' and speedily visit that scene where woman's ruin is made scenic, and death by consumption in a course of crime a thing for British ladies and their daughters to admire—of course, only for the sake of the ' exquisite acting and music!' What has education done here ? Strip the thing of all it gains from the actual scene, the perfection of the acting, the attraction of the music, the nature of the audience; let the same thing be acted at the penny theatre, the chief actress some poor wretch iri whom it would not be acting, and oh, how would 'society' mourn over this development of depravity,—what a field for a 'mission' or extra

cvisy which^ mourns over the 'motes' of the lower and ignorant, but dare not attack the ' beams' in the upper classes. Some of the giant societies will do well to look at the system on which their accounts are audited 5 this is due to the subscribers. All would do well to consider a future very different audit; this is due to the principles they profess. In an age when pure unadulterated humbug prevails, to the exclusion, or at least the suppression, of common honesty, good men must be content to be proved good, even at the bands of Messrs, Quilter and Ball, Coleman, or per the Linldater ordeal. Let 'society,' 'good society,' look to it,—the lower orders can endure the truth being told of their condition, but they will not endure to be fot ever subject to a comparison with the educated, and treated as if to he ignorant was necessarily to be wicked—to be educated good. They may with difficulty pick their way through a book> but they have eyes to see and ears to hear."— English Paper.