ORGANS OF IMPURITY.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 414, 2 December 1884, Page 2

ORGANS OF IMPURITY.

A little while ago we took occasion to, tvm-irk upon the publication of bOrue objectionable details of an afilialiou cuse y tho Kiverton jocil papar.

From our exchanges, which have since j reached us, we find that the Melbourne . c ' Herald ' has been so persistent and c barefaced in publishing particularly I indecent, cases that it has caused the i Church of England Assembly to present a petition to the Legislative ' Council, praying that some steps '. would be taken to prevent the press s from making public the more revolting i details in cases brought before the s Divorce Court. The fact that the ; I publication of such details, in the i ( twords of the petition, " pollutes the whole atmosphere of social life" is so our thinking — notwithstanding the ( * 'I-ter-ild's ' effort to comb-it it — indisputable. Sir John Lubbock, in a lecture upon reiding, goes even so far | as to doubt whether any one ever read ' si ti'Uil for murder without being dis- ; ' tincfcly tin* v\o:-^e for it. Ln the same , lecture, ref -n-ingto objectionable books | ]v« .says : — " t need not say there are j many books which are deadly poison, '' which contain the bacteria of mental i dirtt):it,e, as curtain in their operations j as any of tho. infusions of the physiologist.' It is, we think, an Amcri" cm author who tells us that in youth people generally tumble in "to a mental Jrut, which in after ( life fhey sodom g( t out of. The, sorb of rut the youn« arc likely to fill ! ' info unrW whose, notico such papers as \ the ' Melbourne Herald ' and our j Riverton contemporary frequently comr, . w<! will leave to others to discuss. As popular Iho'ightis to a lar^o extent [ fashioned by th" press, it is the duty of | every one caring for the purity of ■ society to actively discourage the ( [ organs which, for pecuniary considerations, a?e demoralising it by the dis- ? simiuation of thinly veiled filth. 1 __