WHITE SAVAGES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2767, 4 February 1882, Page 2

WHITE SAVAGES.

The following startling picture of life in Melbourne is from the letter of the “ Sydney Morning Herald’s” correspondent “ A girl hud flung a stone at her father, and the wound produced resulted fatally, in consequence of the erysipelas which followed. The jury acquitted the girl, but the circumstance was very suggestive of a certain social condition of things not altogether encouraging. Speaking comprehensively, the whole family were drunk. The father was chasing the daughter with a knife, and the daughter defended herself by hurling a piece of road metal at her father. The worst of it is that such scenes are very commo nin this Queen City of the South. There may be scenes quite as bad in other cities, but there cannot be worse scenes. Our civilization is interwoven with horrible savagery, and the savagery grows worse and worse. So much worse that the Mayor of Pitzroy has called a public meeting to consider what is to be done to put the savagery down. Everybody knows that it might have been put down years ago if the Legislature had been so minded, but it was not so minded, for the very sufficient reason that the Legislature itself was tainted with savagery. And if is yet so tainted, and the magistracyis so tainted. There is, in fact, a distinct sympathy, with crime on the magisterial bench, and the consequence is that nominal instead . of actual penalties are imposed. The savages are masters of the situation, and accordingly they ravish and beat help-« less women ; they kill policemen ; they rob and kill peaceable • citizens; they ' destroy works of art ; they vomit blasphemy in the public streets ; they make public gardens useless for anybody but themselves; they cause travelling" in the railway carriages to he a terror ; they render life generally a burden.”