IS THE WORLD GROWING WICKEDER ?

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue XXXII, 9 March 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

IS THE WORLD GROWING WICKEDER ?

Mu Geokge K. Stetson contributes an article to the American Princeton Review on ''The Renaissance of Barbarism." A I'EIUOU OF MORAL DECADENCE. We are in the midst, Mr Stetson says, of a rising flood of immorality and crime, in which it is most important to take our bearings. We are iu a period of moral decadence —a decadence which is not confined to Massachusetts and the United States, but which casts its shadow over the European continent. Education is more general, our literacy greatly increased, our habits and tastes more refined —a statement that no one will controvert when mado in reference to the state of society in the whole country ; but with this increasing literacy and refinement it is found that we have a decreasing moral sense, and with increasing education an increasing ability in the commitment and concealment of crime. Brutal drunkenness and dissoluteness, and the outragious, inhuman, and barbarous crimes, are now generally coufined to the lowest class in our society. The habits and crimes which indicate education, social position, and a J degree of refinement—such as breaches of trust; skilfully concealed frauds ; public frauds, which, by political influence, receive the sanction of the law; embezzlements, which are compromised to protect either the crimiual or victim, or both together ; eliciting, under the pretence of insolvency ; the misappropriation of public moneys ; skilful burglaries, and other similar crimesare the peculiar province of the great middle class. THE CONTINENT WICKED, ENGLAND GOOD. With regard to the world at large, England is shown to be less submerged in the rising flood thad other countries :—ln France, in a half-century, the number of criminals has increased three times, and the number of rccidivistcs five times. In Saxony, within a few years, criminals under eighteen years of age have increased 430 per cent., and child criminals 190 per cent. In the eight old provinces of Prussia, offences against property have increased by nearly 50 per cent., and those which imply education on the part of the offendors grew disproportionately. Thus, falsified accounts iucreascd cent, per cent., fraudulent bankruptcy neatly 150 per cent., and official frauds over 350 per cent. In Bavaria, for seven years ending 1879, impure violence increased 237 per cent, and in Wurtcmberg 21S per cent., while for twenty-four years in England the increase was 67. TJIE DECLINE OF HOME INFLUENCE. Tuniintr now to the cause vt tho evils alleged, Mr Stetson gives the first place to the decline of home influence :—This condition is, no doubt, due, in a great measure, to the increasing movement of our population from the countries to the cities, the consequent over-crowding and herding together of all classes in cattle pens oalled tenements, in apartments, in hotels, in boarding-houses, where the individuality of tho family is lost, aud its authority disregarded or unknown. The managers or chaplains of our prisons and reformatories are unanimous in the opinion that tho great cause of crime is not so much isjrnoranoe as the absence of a home at the critical time in youth, and in iustances whore systematic enquiry has been made of tho criminal class, for a series of years, it has been found that a very large proportion was without any proper home restraint or inflnence during the later years of minority. VIRTUE NO T.ONGEIt "THE MODE." After discussing some defects in the educational methods of the time, Mr Stetson concludes as follows:—"All these, aud many other influences, motives, and causes have produced a social condition portrayed by M. Caro. ' I asked,' he says, ' a young romancer, already celebrated, why ho encountered in his books so few honest men. 'It is,' said he, • because I have encountered so few in life; virtue has become tiresome as a thesis—it is no longer- la mode.' For our latitude, this may be at the moment a slight exaggeration ; but it will be apparent to every observer that we are rapidly approaching tho lime when it can as truly bo said of our own as of the French society of the present deoado."