Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1874. "MEASURES, NOT MEN."

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 370, 4 July 1874, Page 2

Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1874. " MEASURES, NOT MEN."

It is sometimes amusing, sometimes sad-

dening, and always instructive, to con-

sider the many ways in which the human race strives after notoriety. Men are not

always eager to excell the other animals, as Sallust puts it, by some noble achievement. Still, there is the craving for notoriety, and if it cannot be attained in the arena of honor, there are those who are not averse to it in the walks of infamy. The readers of history are familiar with the fact that the avowed motive of the incendiary who set tire to the Temple

of Ephesus, one of the grandest and noblest edifices human art ever devised —

one of the seven wonders of the world — was notoriety in infamy. When questioned as to his motive, he replied that he did it that his name might descend to posterity along with the destruction of the edifice. This debused craving for notoriety has been a fruitful source of actions not only meaningless and stupid,

but useless and debasing. It has been the fruitful source of crime, and in the young ought to be watched and suppressed.

We have been led into this vein of reflection by the presence in these colonies of what may be fairly traced to this morbid passion for notoriety : we mean larrikinism, Our youths indisposed to obtain distinction in the more honorable walks of

I life, seek it by a daring disregard of the proprieties of life in riot, obscenity, and crime. . They have a hero worship of their own. Their demi-gods are selected from the most notorious character of the Newgate calender : the footpads of the old world, and the bushrangers of the new. By recent files from Australia, it seems that the Victorian larrikins have betaken themselves to garrotting and robbery from the person, and have come under the hands of the police, into whose hands it would have been better for society had they fallen earlier. Those who have treated their escapades as a joke, and have spoken apologetically of wild oats, and youth, and folly, may now see to what their semi-approval has tended. Better far had the young rascals been treated to restraint and severity at an earlier stage. But what are we talking about— repression ! Ought it to be done '? "It is only the sowing of a little wild oats, and it will soon correct itself." So say your easy-going canna-be-fashed sort. If it is to be done, who is to do it ? If the police take it up, there are those who would throw every obstacle in their way,

If the schoolmaster takes it up, he often meets with no encouragement or sympa" thy from those who ought to back his efforts with zeal. If any private individual takes it up, he is told that lie is intermeddling and making too much of it, and that it will cure itself. And thus the evil is allowed to develope, until the community is shocked by some exhibition of the evil ; and the very parties who hinder repression, rush into print and condemn our public schools as nurseries of pollution and crime. They come down upon the police, whom it may be they have thwarted in their attempts to arrest ! the evil ; and twit the benevolent who strive for the good of human society everywhere with allowing their sympathies to' go out to the ends of the earth, and neglect the- criminal at home. It is the easiest sort of virtue that finds out other people's responsibilities, and preaches it up, but it is only a piece of humbug when these persons will not realise their own. But there is one party responsible above all- others, and until they feel their responsibility, the labors of all others in the way of repression are comparatively unimportant. We refer to the parents. Children of tender years are allowed to pick up vice on the public streets, and in a very little time all the maxims of the public and Sunday school teacher are lost. It is not the education of the public schools, as was attempted to be shown in the " Otago Daily Timeß " some time ago, but the " Street School " that dues all the mischief ; and if parents are too indolent or indifferent to keep their children off the streets, we need expect to release nothing but a generation of larrikins. Traces of the evil are already in our midst, and no time ought to be los# in repressing it. We earnestly urge this on the heads of families who have any desire to see thia country grow into an honorable and virtuQus repubfc, -, h ,^b&