OUR LARRIKIN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2420, 14 January 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

OUR LARRIKIN.

The natural history of tho hoodlum needs to be understood. Ho exists in but two places in the world—namely, in San Francisco, Califo.jia, and in the larger cities of Australia, were ho is called Larrikin. Ho is the product of these two goldseeking societies only. Thus ho is uuique. He is something apart from other known typos of criminality (for he is essentially criminal), r"id wo think it not difficult to show that ho is iireclaimable. His evolution is such that for tho purpose of redeeming him you have nothing to brild on. All literature deals with a criminal conscience. Even the Proverbs recognize it, as in the saying " murder will out," Southey's "Jasper" is betrayed by it. Webster used it with fatal force in the prosecution of Knapp. The hoodlum does not poi sess it. For its absence there is adequate reason. The ciiuainal conscience survives over from a period of boyhood when certain moral lessons wore received. They may have bean re ,: gious lessons as we 1 !. In a'l the older communities on earth, bar none, there has always existed, as there still exists, a living tradition of morality and of religious convictions which infect the young, even into the boue of them. Tho commission of monstrous cilme at a later ago is apt to stir up theiv second nature in a remarkable way, And again, all reformatory effort has had this youthful quality to build upon. In the San Francisco hoodlum and Melbourne lairikin, it is absolutely absent. We have in them the natural mau only developed by an exclusively immoral training 1 . Caught in maturity, its simulacrum of a human being is no more capable of being humanized than is the tho hyteua of being tamrj. All scietico recognises the fact that man is born savage, without moral qualities, which are afterwards developed iu a tolerably constant order. Unless developed in their due plape ii) tl|p sue? cession, they can scarcely afterwapd he communis ated at all. Iu our hoodlum and larrikin they do not exist even in germ. The species is as tificially depraved and exclusively bad. Jt is irreclaimable. The only problem in connection with hoodlum-larrikin is, whether it is desirable for society to i iterfere with the eon. tinned production of him, or with his propagation, Tho lattor is not practicable at present, owing to popu l r prejudice and .squeamishnosa. The former will ho found prac ieable as soon as society makes up its mind to act, which as yet it shows no symptoms of doing. Meantime, every opportunity to hang a hoodlum ought to be caught at, As a deterrent from his peculiar practices, it is the one measure he can understand,