THE PALL MALL GAZETTE SCANDAL.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2111, 19 January 1886, Page 4

THE PALL MALL GAZETTE SCANDAL.

Mr Jcstk'k Lorhs in sentencing Mr Stead said :—: — William. Thomas Stead, you have been found guilty under two indictments— the one charging you \utn the abdu'-tion of EUaa Aiinstrong, the other charging you with the abduction of other charging you with an indecent assault. Believing in the existence of most houible depravity, it appears to me that you made ■-titeniLiiti about it, which, wlieu challenged, you wt'ie unable to verify. Vow then determined to verify the truth of youi asiettions by an experiment with a eh. ld who uaa to be bought and subjected to all that a real victim would lia\c been, but was to be leseued befoie any hami was done. For that puipose you selected a person of alleged reformed eharacti r, but who to your knowledge had passed a life— infamous life, as. I m ly say — pandering to and encouraging the very sins which you say— and I believe you — you were so anxious to repress. You chose your own agent, and, as might have been anticipated, having regard to her antecedents, which you fully well knew, that agent deceived you. The jury have so found, and so I believe. I regret' to say that you thought fit to publish in the Pall Mall Gazette a distorted account of the case of Eliza Armstrong and that you deluged, some months ago, our streets and the whole country with an amount of filth which has, as I fear, tainted the minds of children, and which has been— and I don't hesitate to say, ever will be — a disgrace to journalism. An irreparable injury has been done to the parents of this child, and they have been subjected to the unutterable scandal and ignominy of having sold their child for violation. lam going to give effect to the recommendation cf the jury which they made on Saturday night, but I cannot forget that you are an educated man, who should have known that the law cannot be broken to promote any supposed good, and that the sanctity of private life cannot be invaded for the fuitherance of the views of an individual who, lam inclined to believe, thought that the end would sanctify the means. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot pass anything but ft substantial sentence, and that is that you be imprisoned without hard labour for three calender months.

Mr Justice Stephen, in charging the Grand Jury at the Norwich assizes, said he was sorry there was such a heavy calendar. He had observed during the course of this circuit that the number of indecent cases brought up for trial, consisting principally of assaults upon little girls, was very much larger than usual. He could not ascribe this increase in any way to the working of the new Criminal Law Amendment Act, because, out of the enormous number of cases that had come before him, only two — one here and one at Maidstone — were triable under that act, and would not have been triable under the law as it stood before the Act was passed. Neither could he ascribe the increase to any special activity on the part of the police ; for the cases, without exception, had been brought forward in ti.e natural and usual way by the parents of the children who had been assaulted. He could not help fearing that these case«, which had always occurred to a certain extent, had increased in number by the most unwise and injurious measures that had been taken for drawing public attention to the subject. In questions of this kind, he thought that to call great public attention to them, and to describe all their details— he cared not under what philanthropic or religious pretences — was about the most insane, the most injurious, the most dangeious thing which those who had the honour and welfare of their country at heart could possibly do. One might as well open a sewer and invite people to come and small it, thereby to judge what a dangerous thing Bewer-gas was. They might say, "We do it only to show the foulness of the gas ;' but the effect would be a dreadful extension of disease. Mr Justice Wills, in charging the Grand Jury at the Liverpool assizes, referred to the numerous offences against girls and women, and warned the jury to be watchful with regard to these cases, upon which of late an extraordinary and extravagant amount of attention had been concentrated. Prurient minds were easily stimulated by literature such as that of which there had been too much, and while offences were easily charged, accusations were difficult to get rid of. In a thoughtful article, entitled "Can Wrong bo Right ?" the Christian World says the community consists very largely of those whose moral safety is best assured by unconscious innocence. We might be grateful for a sudden loud alarm, sufficient to awaken our sleepy shepherds. But a persistent weekly and daily exposition of iniquity, continued until the incessant rumour fills every school, and even penetrates into every nursery, must necessarily degenerate into an intolerable nuisance. An apostle has said "It is a shame even to speak of those things that are done of them in secret." This sensitive shame that shrinks even from the mention of abomination, is one of the best safeguards of youth. The alleged justification for the woman Jarrctt's mission was the necessity for showing how easily an innocent child may be procured for ruin. The prevalence of pocket-picking would not justify an amateur thief in stealing in order to shame the police. But, apart from such an obvious consideration as that, the mission of Jarrett has had precisely an opposite effect. It has been proved that a woman familiar with all the haunts of vice has totally failed in doing what she was set to do, and in chagrin at her failure resorted to a very common-place fraud upon au uneducated and careless mother. When Christianity was first preached to the Gentiles, the Conservative Jews declared that St Paul's view of their sacred law involved the propriety of "doing evil that good might come. " From such a doctrine he recoiled with horror, and regarded its imputation as an intolerable slander. But if the iction of the " Secret Commission" in the Armstrong case is now justified by Christian opinion, a singular and lamentable change must have come over the Church. With all the cruelty of morbid suntimentalism, Jarrett's emploj crs sent her to do a work in which lying and fraud were the first essentials of buccess. Nor was it in her case only that they welcomed the help of falsehood. We should have been unwilling to believe any witness but Mr Stead himself on such a charge. But, in his cross-examination, he deliberately accounted for confusion and inconsistency in the case for the defence by the unwonted excitement through which lie had passed while " drinking champagne and telling lies in places of ill-fame. Yet though so bold in using such expedients as these, when asked upon what day a certain paper was written, he replied in penitential cadence, ' c I am sorry to say, on Sunday." We were wishful to make every allowance for the circumstances under which these answers were given. But after straining charity to the utmost, we have an irrepressible feeling that this compunction about times and seasons, and this hardihood where the indefeasible authority of truth is concerned, are symptomatic of a weakness that saps the morajity of Christendom. Finally, it is not light, and no motives can make it right, to expose one poor child to shame and public scandal in the hope of rescuing others. Society, in a pungent and telling article on "Converted Sinners," says there are baser motives at work in the manufacture than vanity. It is a trade that pays. It pays better than honest work ; it is easy and more comfortable. The "converted sinner," as a rule, rides through life in a first-class carriage, whilst the honest worker walks in the mud. The "converted" sinner finds preaching and showing up, to the no small benefit of his employers' exchequer, his former fellow-sinners, * not unprofitable or uncomfortable calling. The

' couxpi ti'il " washci- woman forsakes today her till), and to-monou is found with plenty of money in her pockets, acting as paid spy or secret ayent in the woik of debauching and demoialtMiig her former friends and acqtiaint.iin.es, temptin;.' motliers to sell tlieir young children to infamy, in the name cf religion nml for the s-ake of advancing public morality. What .1 hideo is fraud on ni'd.tlily, what an atrocious outtage on religion pure <\w\ undt fikd.