The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The appearance of the cholera in the
Mediterranean has revived that maniacal terror which
in certain countries is the periodical substitute for
habitual common sense and ordinary precaution.
Whether cholera be epidemic, infectious, or conta-
gious we have almost ceased to inquire, for the simple
reason that it is impossible to keep out a pest which
travels with the wind, or is conveyed in a bit of
cloth; a breath, or a touch, but quite possible to
reduce to a minimum each man's chance of a serious
attack, and each place's chance of a destructive
visitation. Cleanliness, good food, regular habits,
will almost secure a person or a place, and where
these are wanting there is no security. The cities
of the Mediterranean trust to good air, to chance,
to Providence, and to that display of wild energy
which the Governments are always expected to
show in the hour of danger. But in that fairest of
regions you have only to walk a hundred yards
from your hotel in almost any direction to see with
your own eyes, and perceive with your own nose,
that no preparation is made against the worst epi-
demics, and that the plague would find ready victims.
We read lately in a traveller's account of Cairo
that there was not a drain in it, and that the sun
and the dogs were the only scavengers. The case is
nearly as bad in most of the cities that rear their
white walls, flat roofs, and orange groves out of the
blue sea. Even without the help of a plague, life
is not long there, but long life is not wanted ; a
great deal is done in a short time, and, to the last,
bright scenes and pleasant hopes hide the approach
to the grave. But the climate is a standing miracle,
and the people live cheerfully through foods and
drinks, smells, vermin, heat and chills that would
not only shorten life here, but render it intolerable.
So they won't prepare for the evil day. They think
they need not, and they are not content to remain
as they are. At the first rumour of the approach-
ing foe they feel like men without fortifications, or
arms, or the art of war. They hale nothing to fall
back upon. They have no practical measure of the
danger and its preventatives, so they fly to super-
stition, to old formalities, to anything that may
satisfy the imagin'ation,—the quarantine, the laza-
retto, fumigations, immersions, the perforation of
letters, and such expedients as satisfy the craving
to do something or other. A thousand experiences
are against them ; hardly one for them ; but they
meet the terrible theories of contagion and infec-
tion ; and as nothing else has been done, they are all
that can be done when the cholera is approaching.
It is to be )considered, however, that the inter-
national relations of the . civilised world are not
quite what they were five hundred years ago. We
now do not think it a matter of no importance—in-
deed, desirable rather than otherwise—to put our
neighbours to the greatest possible inconvenience,
to keep them waiting any number of days or weeks,
or even to destroy a few of them. The old theory
was that nobody had a right to enter a foreign
land, and that if he was permitted to enter at last,
he had no right to complain of delay, cost, and
-danger. Happily, this is not the religion of our
days. We even recognise an international obliga-
tion to do all the good we can to one another, and
the least possible harm. We must be excused, then,
if we become sensible of a grievous anachronism
when we hear of a traveller expecting to be kept in
quarantine several days at Brindisi, Ancona, Trieste,
and even six at Marseilles. What actually happened
to a traveller who attempted to save the quarantine
by coming home via Constantinople and the Da-
nube is no more than might be expected from such
a route. On arriving at the Dardanelles, after a
stormy passage, resulting in three deaths among the
pilgrims crowded on deck, he found himself treated
as an enemy of the human race. He was ordered
into a lazaretto, where he had to make hiniself as
comfortable as he could in one corner of a room,
opening by a door into another equally crowded.
Here he was a prisoner, as, indeed, were all the
other occupants, and a mouthful of fresh air would
have cost hire a bullet through his lungs. In this
misery a neighbour did fall sick, and was thereupon
hurried off to a sort of condemned cell at the hos-
pital, where, in confinement, solitude, and utter
want of everything, he speedily died, and was as
speedily buried. As the English traveller had touched
the poor man, his quarantine of ten days—for that
he found to be the term when there was not a clean
bill of health—had to recommence, and he may con-
gratulate himself that he is not there still, waiting
till he has completed ten days from and after every
incident at all likely to suggest a suspicion. As one
room in the lazaretto contained 11 persons, two of
them down with fever, we can only conclude that
they must be there still, unless, indeed, they have
all followed the luckless Italian whose fate the tra-
veller witnessed to the hospital without nurses
or medicine, and the grave without ceremony.
Our time, of course, may come. The cholera is
said to be advancing westward slowly, but surely.
The last report was from Marseilles. In London
we have had a good deal of that sort of illness which
is supposed to turn into cholera under certain con-
ditions. We feel sure, however, that if the cholera
comes this way, no quarantine, no detentions, no
fumigation, no lines of demarcation will keep it out.
The disease will appear in many different places at
once, many miles from one another, and all far away
from the traditional sailor landed at .Rotherhithe.
We well remember the sporadic appearance of the
disease all over England in 1832, in villages, in
situations high and dry, selected for health, in par-
sonages where contagion and infection were impos-
sibilities. Indeed, the panic of that year ran rather
on articles of diet, and the produce of the best gar-
dens in the country went a begging. All sorts of
stories were told of fatal indulgence. One lady died
after partaking of the fruits and sweets that re-
mained from a college " gaudy ;" a clergyman
walked in his garden after dinner, plucked the cur-
rants, and wis dead next morninc, ; an attorney
supped on crab, and was shortly a dead man. There
were hundreds of such stories, in which it is pro-
bable that the truth was told, but not all the truth,
or the most important part of the truth. Consider-
ing that an effective quarantine is impossible, and
that we cannot immediately take a great step in our
sanitary arrangements, we are disposed to think
that a general regard to personal health and an
avoidance of needless risks is our proper way of
meeting the supposed invader. In some respects the
English are much more reckless than the inhabitants
of even more genial climates. The Englishman has
not that horror of rain and wet clothes, of exposure
to a burning sun, or of the chill after a hot day that
pervades the south of Europe. The Englishman gets
up later and goes to bed later than most of his Con-
tinental neighbours. Many tnglishmen suffer more
than they need do from bad cookery, or rather from
what may be called no cookery at all. Many among
us take a pride in being able to eat and drink any-
thing—nothing comes amiss to them. This may be
harmless under ordinary circumstances, but there
are occasions, even without the presence of an epi-
demic, that try a strong constitution, and if the
cholera gets a footing here, it will not improve mat-
ters in this respect.

HERALD.—At a time of comparative quietude in
the political world there is every opportunity for
devoting our attention to social questions, and to
those revelations of common life which are for ever
making themselves heard in the police courts. In-
deed, the taste of the age runs in that direction,
and we are much more apt to " look at home" for
matters to discuss than we were in other and less
peaceful times. This fact is plainly proved in our
modern histories ; and it cannot be forgotten that
Macaulay's great element of popularity consisted
in the eminently " social" tone he imparted to his
" History of England." Scott, in his fictions, must
have considerable credit for working the lodes of
this social mine, and treating of the real life under-
lying his romance • -while the present Archbishop
of Dublin has, in his " Social Aspect of the Thirty
Years' War," gone similarly to work; and noted
how great contests by " flood and field" affected
the people below the ken of graver and more lofty
historians. After all, the lees of society have much
in common with the wealth and prosperity of na-
tions ; and it is wise to study this shifting, teeming
foundation, if we want, in the language of Napoleon '
111., to understand ourselves and our epoch. The
famous Latin quotation, expressing the necessary
interest of man in everything human, should be
kept in remembrance, otherwise we read our annals
but poorly, and lose half our lesson. Years ago
" the cry of the children" in our streets attracted
considerable attention, and good results have so far
followed that ragged schools and reformatories have
become institutions of the land. " Homes" of all
kinds there are for the neglected little ones—the
offspring of pariahs and social criminals,who neglect,
and even let loose to rob, those they should honestly
nurture and protect. Diem is no want of philan-
thropy, of gener9us effort to rescue children from
the destruction that follows closely upon vice.
But the task is a heavy one, and Augean stables
of poverty and crime demand a river of wholesome
effort to cleanse them of their foulness. How
painfully these facts are thrust upon our attention
can be seen in the ever-recurring instances of
youthful crime which are made public through the
columns of the daily press. The children of the
very poor are, undoubtedly, quick to ripen in a
certain kind of knowledge. They are not " winter
pears," of late fruition ; and it is really wonderful
at how early an age a neglected infant--many
offenders against the laws are nothing more than
infants—thrown upon the streets, learns to deceive,
to plot, and to steal, with a shrewdness equal to
that of much older criminals.' Now and then it is
not exactly poverty that turns these wretched chil-
dren upon the streets, it is gross inhumanity aria
heartless violation of parental duties. This is a kind
of desperate wickedness that demands punishment •
and we are sorry to see that punishment thus earned
•

-...

does not always fall upon the right shoulders.
What, for instance, do parents deserve who turn
their miserable offspring out to steal at an age
when, ingmany spherei'of life, children are scarcely
out of the nursery ; neglect is bad enough, but
absolute encouragement to crime is so far worse
that it calls for severe measures—measures that,
unfortunately, cannot always be adopted in the
present state of our criminal law. The immediate
text upon which these remarks are founded will no
doubt occur to our readers. It was given in our
impression of yesterday. On Tuesday last two chil-
dren, a boy aged ten, and a girl aged eight years,
were brought to the Clerkenwell Police-court,
charged with plotting to obtain is., by fradulent
pretences, from a licensed victuallei7. These children,
although so young, were evidently adepts in the
predatory art, and the way in which they went
about their shocking and unlawful business sug-
gests either intense natural shrewdness, or criminal
ability acquired in the school of Fagin the Jew.
The technical phrases of the report read curiously
enough in such a case. " The male prisoner," the
child of ten years, " went into the Olive Branch
Tavern, and called for and was served with half a
pint of beer in a common earthenware jug. He
put down half a crown and was given his proper
change." Then begins the plot. The other prisoner,
the girl of eight years, entered the public-house
and " asked what was the price of the best
brandy." As soon as this question was answered,
the " male prisoner" asserted that be had not
received his right change ; he wanted a shilling more.
The landlord's suspicions were then aroused, and
as the girl was leaving the house he detained her.
We may make short work of the denouement. The
child was searched, and in her pinafore the missing
shilling found. But these two children had learnt
their lesson well ; the devices of the predatory school
did not fail them ; and they declared, " with great
vehemence and oaths," that they were total strangers
to each other. They were, however, given into
custody, and certain spoils and silver money were
found upon them, the proceeds, no doubt, of other
criminal adventures. Nor was this the first time
of their coming under suspicion. They had before
this occurrence been " remanded for a week," and.
then discharged with a caution. So that "Edward.
and Emma Steel, aged respectively ten and eight,"
were experienced practitioners. The why and the
wherefor of this early development of kleptomania.
came fully out during the proceedings at Clerken-
well. The father of these wretched children had, it
appeared, regularly despatched them abroad on their
errands of robbery. He had on many occasions
interfered to save them from punishment by stating
that they were " respectable," when he was, of
course, aware that they had before come under the
cognisance of the police, and he had been successful
in preserving them for the disgraceful business till,
according to the statement of the attorney prosecut-
ing, they had achieved the grand number of one
hundred and fifty frauds by similar devices to that
under the consideration of the court. To establish
the truth of this statement, Mr. Rickets, the attorney
in question, said that "he had then more than fifty
tradesmen in attendance to go on with charges "
against the two children, while the reporter inform;
us that " the court was well filled with licensed vic-
tuallers and others who had been defrauded by the
prisoners." Now what was the magistrate to do in
such a case as this ? The father of the children,
" a working shoemaker, who did not seem to do
much work," but who was reported to be
the habit of riding out in a waggonette " on
Sunday, was in court, and he expressed his belief
that his girl, eight years of age, had been "led away"
by his boy of ten. " But he did not know." This
was truly a lame excuse for a father who was proved
to be thoroughly cognisant of his children's criminal
proceedings, and to have assisted them by his pro-
tection and countenance when they were "in
trouble." It was a bad excuse—worse than no ex-
cuse at all ; and it is not to be wondered at that
Mr. Barker, being unable to lay the responsibility
where it should be borne, expressed his regret at the
failure of complete justice in the case. All he could
effect in the way of rescue, and in the nature of
punishment, was the sending of the boy to prison
for a month with hard labour, and then to a refor-
matory for five years. The girl he discharged. Here
is a history of parental neglect with a vengeance;
of children corrupted while their years can yet be
counted on their fingers ; and of law impotent to
reach the real offender. We hope there are not
many such waiting to be told ; but it is impossible
to be patient under the fact that the responsible
heroes of such stories leave the court with nothing
more than a stain on their character.