An Outspoken Bishop.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 12, 15 January 1904, Page 4

An Outspoken Bishop.

The Bishop of Stepney startled a highly respectable meeting of philanthropists at the Mansion House recently (writes a London correspondent), by saying that many of (he East End youtihs who fell into I lie hands of ihe police, and wen- toiivicted for 'disturbing the peace, v.cro no worse morally than the exuberant Oxford undergraduates that he knew, some of them ihe sons ami mothers of his audience. The human nature exhibited was the same in both cases. The. East End youth sulfeiod the taint of a prison for his offence, whereas the Oxford undergraduuto, after his "jolly evening"—which often included the smashing of u good 'deal of properly that did not belong' to him—was merely lectured by the dean, or rusticated for a time. The Binhop also said he had seen in piison girls who were as good and pure u.s the daughters of any member of his audience. A girl of the lower classes, yielding to the pressure of friends, took intoxicating drink, committed some freak, and was landed in goal as a " drunk and disord-.-rly." Oirls m upper class society, afraid to g'um'blo or to take drink lest they should olfend their hostesses, sometimes got into worse trouble—worse from the moral point of view—'but were protected from its social consul, ten-ces throug'h the privileges of their class.