MORALITY IN VICTORIA.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 87, 13 September 1873, Page 3

MORALITY IN VICTORIA.

Under this heading the Weekly News dilates very sensibly on the state of social matters in Victoria. Infanticide, or the wholesale slaughter of innocent victims of man’s perfidy and woman’s weakness —bastardy, seduction, outrages on women and children, and desertion —seem to be the ground work for a Commission recently appointed—among whom are ladies and medical men—to make such enquiries into the M causes” (an invidious duty) which lead to such an infamous state of things, as will aid in planning some means for their amelioration. It proceeds in a strain which we think particularly applicable to many other other places than Victoria:— “ The propriety of consulting the female sex in such as case has been questioned by some, but it is, we think, of little consequence one way or other. Neither medical skill nor female ingenuity will be likely to probe the evil to its core, until society wakens up to the conviction that something more is essential to the preservation of good -order in the community than outward morality, and the observance of the decencies of social life. The results which are now deplored have their root too deep down in the constitution of modern conventionality to be reached by any temporary remedy. The remedy lies mainly with those who give society its hue; who are even now

moulding the character of succeeding generations--namely, the heads of families, and especially mothers. It is these who must take the first step in stemming the torrent of loose morals, which their own passivity and the laxity of home dicipline have so long fostered, and are still fostering in almost every colonial community. There can be no doubt but that many of the blots which are now fast spreading over the surface of society—in some quarters to such an extent as to cause alarm even to persons who on mere moral grounds were not likely to give themselves much concern about the matter —are largely the outcome of all but total abandonment of that judicious “ home rule ” which at one time was characteristic of English domestic life, but which in these days is very nearly unknown in colonial households. In short there is no mistaking the tendency of the age in this respect. Liberty to the full is accorded to our youth of both sexes; and, if the results are not likely to be all that could be hoped for, at least it will be admitted that they are all that could have been expected. On one point, which we have not touched upon, a Melbourne contemporary takes, we think, a very proper view of this subject. He says: ‘Woman herself, who is the greatest sufferer from the evils here referred to, has the remedy almost entirely in her own hands. If, instead of courting the society of the libertine, even where the victims were only ‘ poor governesses ’ or uncultivated housemaids, they cut the acquaintance of the heartless scoundrels, and absolutely refused to associate with them, the perpetrators of these unmanly crimes would be reduced to herd among themselves, and respectable society, in the true sense of the term, would be delivered from at least a portion of the taint of coarseness and dishonor which their presence now too often inflicts upon it.’ Instead of such men being readily received with open arms into the ‘ best families,’ as we sometimes read of, especially if they happen to be moneyed rakes, they should be indignantly spurned by every true woman having the smallest respect for herself, or the slightest regard for those qualities of mind and heart which go to make up the cherished ideal of the sex.