INDECENT NEWSPAPER REPORTS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 272, 17 November 1874, Page 4

INDECENT NEWSPAPER REPORTS.

{Otago Daily Times.) The leading English journals have occasionally been good enough to re* mind ns — and the reminder is not altogether unneeded — tbat we colonists are too fond of the paulo-poat future tense, and are apt to take credit for great deeds that are as yet unperformed. We hare, therefore, the more pride in pointing to one undoubted and inveterate nicer to which a Colonial knife has recently been applied. The Judge of the Victoria Divorce Court, who has been for some days trying a petition for divorce, has disappointed the scandal-mongers, who expected a rich harvest of improprieties from this particular case, by trying the case privately. This most sensible decision dries up the stream of pruriency at its fountain-head, and is, we doubt not, only the first step towards such a coarse being adopted in all our Courts of law ia cases of a like nature. Now Colonial newspaper readers set np no pretensions to be more squeamish than their English contemporaries, but they feel they are only ottering a complaint that ought long ere this to bave made itself heard in the Mother-country, when tbey say that no mail reaches these Southern shores that does not contain matter— and much matter — the publication of Which is a disgrace to onr boasted nineteenth«century civilization. We refer — and we bave no intention of mincing matters — to tbe reports of divorce cases, and of cases of breach of promise, tbat disfigure the pages of such otherwise meritorious publications as tbe Home News and European Mail. Sorely tbe editors of those most respectable organs cannot think that tbe ghastly details of conjugal infidelity, of feminine frailty, and of masculine treachery, tend to edification. Jf the man lives who sincerely believeß that he is upholding the interests of virtue by telling us how a " deboebed Captain " won what are termed by courtesy the affections of a Right tlonorable Countess, and how the Countess's magnanimous husband, instead of thrashing him within an inch of bis life, strove to make much money oot of the enemy ot tbe peace of hb household, we implore that mis- _ guided being to reserve his " shocking examples" for tbe instruction of British readers. Let that kind of garbage be kept exclusively for home consumption. We have long ago refused to take convicts; it is high time tbat we put a stop to tbe shooting of literary rubblieh on our shores. Tbe purer taste of tbe present age has very properly excluded from every publication that has the least pretensions to respectability, tbe grossoesses that disfigured the pages of almost every poet, novelist, or satirist of the last century. We have long > ago learned from the example of Sir Waller Scott — to whose memory be all honor, were it for tbis alone — tbat it is possible to write scores of volumes that will fascinate readers of both sexes and of every age, without the introduction of a single word tbat would offend the most fastidious. But the craving for au impurity tbat is being driven from the higher regions now finds what it seeks in a lower literary stratum. In one respect society is clearly a loser by the change. A careful father could formerly lock up each "broad " literature as he thought unfitted for the eyes of his sods and daughters, but what vigilance is sufficient to purify or to exclude the newspaper that appears in such innocent guise on the family breakfast table ? We are unwilling to cay more on a subject that it is difficult to meddle with at all without falling into the very fanlt that we deprecate. We can ouly trust that the well-meant warning that we bave given may be taken in good part, and that the proprietors, not only of the papers to which we have referred by name, but of others wbo equally offend against propriety, will accept our •assurance that we are not expressing merely onr individual views, but tbat 'ire are also the exponents of a very strong aud very general public opinion on tbis matter. After the lapse of a reasonable interval, during which we shall look anxiously for signs of amendment, we shall again refer to this subject, we hope, only to express our satisfaction at an improvement tbat is indeed sorely needed.