A STRANGE THEORY. Remarkable Suggestions Regarding the Whitechapel Murders,

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 350, 13 March 1889, Page 6

A STRANGE THEORY. Remarkable Suggestions Regarding the Whitechapel Murders,

I received a mosb extraordinary letter the other day from a man about the Whiteehapel murders : ' The tru c authors,' lie writes, 'of these Whiteehape and Bradford crimes are radical humanitarians, who have been sitting upon the safety valve of humanity until the beast that boils within has burnt up the whole concern. Formerly we had, to let off the steam, our bull and bear baitings, our public executions, our constant soldier and sailor {loggings, our prize fights. Now, with the exception of a few field sports, of necessity confined to the more wealthy and genteel members of the community, this England of ours has no legitimate vent for that inborn ferocity which is as natural to man as thirst, hunger or love. Why, &ir, thanks to your rascally and pre posterous radical legislation, many an Englishman now passes through life from childhood to old age, and never even sees blood, except in an underdone chop at an eating-house. ' Consider, sir, who are the most polished people of the world. The Frenchman, softened by constant revolutions and the guillotine ; the Spaniard, mollified by bulllights ; the Italian, whose severe treatment of all domestic animals, and especially post- horses, leaves his mind suave, gentle and tender for intercourse with his kind. What men in all history, except perhaps our own lri&h landlord?, have been among themselves so polite, so amiable, so courteous as the chivalrous slave-holding aristocracy of Carolina and Maryland? Why? Because they had a safety-valve. When they felt they wanted to let out they went down among their niggers and got it over. After an hour or so of flogging, branding and eye-gouging, they came home, had a bath, put on a clean shirt, had un easy shave and descended to make themselves pleasant among their peers at the dinnertable or in the drawing-room like Christian gentlemen. ' The plain truth is, that if you want to go through the pretenco of expelling nature with the foik, it must be a wide-pronged fork that will let a good deal of nature through. We shall never get rid of thesso Whiteehapel crimes until we recur to the wise measures of our ancestoi'3, and provide a little legalised and reasonable barbarity for our masses at stated intervals. Let us be moderately and rationally brutal one day in the week, in order that we may be meek, gentle and forbearing the other six. ' It has been well said (and in more senses than one) that tho blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. Why, sir, even in the Middle Ages (those c Ages of Faith ') the torch of Christian charity and brotherly love had to be constantly rekindled at the auto da fe. Let us then kill or torture something from time to time — a criminal, an animal of some sort, or if the worst comes to tho worst, an insect (or why noo a pauper ?) — to make us kind to the weak ones of ourrace, the women and the little boys whom (really for want of something else to do) we now butcher and mutilate in \ Whiteehapel and Bradford. — • London Tauth.'