A TERRIBLE TOYAGE.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3808, 12 March 1881, Page 3

A TERRIBLE TOYAGE.

The public is periodically horrified by revelations of the misery endured by emigrants on English passenger ships; but, to judge from the declarations which hare lately been'published by steerage passengers on steamers sailing from Havre and Antwerp, the worst English passenger ship is a paradise compared with some of the foreign steamers. The Switzerland, for instfince, which sailed from Antwerp November 20 for New York,' appears^ to have been a perfect pandemonium. She had 430 steerage passengers on board, mostly Gprmans and, Swedes, and she was eighteen days in crossing the Atlantic. There was no separation between the sexes; there were only three lights in the steerage at night; and in the semi-darkness the mixed multitude Have way to such brutal immorality that, in the words of one of the passengers, •'the ship was nothing less than a floating hell." The people were crowded together like hogs in a pen. The steerage was never'cleaned, but remained foul and filthy throughout the voyage, the accumulating abominations emitting ,• an effluvium " beyond belief." Two gallons of water were served out for the four hundred passengers to wash with, and pure drinking water was unattainable. Most of the crew were shipped drunk. One of them was so nearly murdered by the boatswain that his life was despaired of. Two Italian .stowaways were stripped naked and %% txposed to the biting wind for hours on deck. The sailors were more than once on the verge of mutiny. "These horrors of the Atlantic steerage recall memories of the Middle Passage.—Pall Mall Gazette.

spirit and ruler of • the universe, are forced to admit that they can adduce no __ proofs or arguments cogent enough to Compel conviction from sincere minds constructed in another mould. There are facts, indications, corollaries, which seem to suggest the great inference almost irresistibly to our minds. There are other facts, indications, corollaries which to other minds seems as irresistably to negative that inference. Data, admitted by both, appear of very different weight to each. The difficulties in the way of either conclusion are confessedly stupendous. The difficulty ;of conceiving the eternal Tpre-existence of a personal creator I perceive to be immense; the difficulty of conceiving the origin and evolution of the actual universe

independently of such personal Creator, „,1 .should characterise as insuperable. ,;The Positivist—the devotee of pure ;:" Science—would simply reverse the adjectires. We can neither of us turn the minor into the m*jor difficulty for the Other .without altering the constitution of Bis intelligence. He does not say, "'Jhere is no God ;" be merely says, "I -S--6ee no phenomena which irresistably suggests one; 1 see many which negative the suggestion; and I have greater difficulty in conceiving all that the existence of such a being would involve than in the contrary assumption." Ido not ■ay, " I know there is a God ;" I only Bay, I observe and infer much that forces that conviction in upon me. But I r cognise that these observations find inferences would not entitle me to demand the same conviction from him. In fine, neither

doctrine can be proved or disproved—the votaries of neither are entitled to insist upon imposing their convieticn upon others on the plea of it 3 demonstrability. I am entitled, however, to retain mine as, to me, the believable one. I awyers tell us of a title that is unsaleable, but indefeasible. There is some analogy in the case we are considering.

Neither do visible and ascertainable phenomena countenance the theory of a future life. It is a matter of intuitive conviction, or of deduction from received or assumed doctrines, not of logical inference from established data. I cannot demand assent to it, with any justice or on any plea of cogent argument, from a reasoner who is destitute of my intuitive conviction, or who deems my deductions

'erroneous or demurs to the doctrines from wh'ch they flow. But, on the other band, since I cxn specify undeniable indications which, to all appearance, that hypothesis < nly can elucidate, and since he can in no way d'tuonstrate its untenability or its contrarity with known truths, lam entitled to hold it as, to me, the most credible belief.

These will seem to enthusiastic believers disappointing and timid positions t" take up ou such momentous questions, but the most advanced positions are not always the most tenable, and the humblest are often the strongest. The Safe position for a candid reasoner, and the only true one, is not that which is most menacing to his antagonist, but one from which the holder cannot be dislodged.—From the Preface to W. E. Gbeo's "Enigmas of Life."