WORK FOR MISSIONARIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4571, 13 November 1875, Page 1 (Supplement)

WORK FOR MISSIONARIES.

The following record of one day of the savage side of Melbourne is from tho Ary us ;—“ The scene is one of the precincts of St. Francis’s Chni’ch, in the heart of the city of Melbourne, the time is Sunday morning, and the dramatis persona: are two women and two men. What they were performing was probably intended for a tragedy, but it was not allowed to be played out; so that we are left in ignorance as to what might have been the catastrophe. All that we really know is, that it was a savage orgie, and that in the conflicts which took place between the infuriated quartet, an iron bar was freely used. Probably it was mistaken for a slullelah. In the midst of tho combat the Dens ex machina descended, in the person of a policeman, and the four combatants were removed to the lockup. In a hovel adjoining that in which the foregoing scene occurred, an old woman was found in a drunken stupor, lying, as the constable expressed it, “ like a dead sheep,” with an empty gin bottle for her pillow. The place was indescribably filthy, and the aspect of its sole occupant resembled that of a bundle of dilapidated clothes. On the same day one of a gang of larrikins endeavored to force his way into a publichouse, and, producing a knife, threatened “to rip the inside out” of those who resisted his entry. To complete the story of a single day’s proceedings at the City Police Court, wo have a charge of vagrancy preferred against a gild of nineteen, who voluntarily relinquishes domestic service to go and herd with Chinamen and roughs. Now, we put tho question seriously to those worthy and well-meaning people who fit out missionary expeditions to New Guinea, the islands of the Pacific, and elsewhere, can they find, in any part of the world, black races who stand more urgently in need of being Christianised and civilised than the white savages of onr own blood and kindred who are lurking in tho hack lanes and rights-of-way in this very city and its suburbs ? And until these have been humanised and rescued from a condition of brutality, compared with which the position of tho Papuan or Samoan is positively paradisaic, can we continue to lavish money and to expend effort upon schemes of ‘ telescopic’ philanthropy without experiencing sharp compunctions of conscience ?”