Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-09-04
ImmORAL LITERArUmE.


IMMORAL LITERATURE.
We are not concerned at present
with the blood and thunder litera-
ture which inspires our ingenious
youth with the aspiring ambition of
becoming pirates or highwaymen
or western trappers, with a chance
of scalping or being scalped; the
pistol and the bowie-knife, as the
toys of adolescent virility, shall be
let alone by us for the present. Nor
are we going this time to protest
against Ouida's lascivious reports of
the dOings Of the monde, or Zola's
revolving revelations OF the denai-
monde. The details of the last rape
or murder case. with thesubsequent
proceedings of Judge Lynch. and
the piquant details of the divorce
suits shall be paraded In family cir
cles unwhippered of us-for the
present.
All these are concerned with in
fractions of the sixth and seventh
commandments, and perhaps we
might throw in the exciting annals
of Wall street and the United States
treasury as more directly connected
with the eighth, but at present we
desire to remind men that there is a
ninth, which must have been so
utterly forgotten that we deem it
necessary to print it in full and to
print it large:
"THoU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE
/ WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGH
BOR."
We assure our readers that those
words are taken from the decalogue,
and have been transferred from it
to the cateehisms which theystudied
in Sunday-school, whether Of the
Westminster pattern or of that of
Laad and Whitgift. But stop! it is
not our readers whom we are now
addressing, either-though haply
they too may need the reminder-it
is our contemporaries, the editorial
corps, whom we desire to awaken
to the remembrance that there is a
ninth commandment, which comes
to US with no lighter sanction than /
the sixth, seventh and eighth. /.
"Thou shalt not Kill, thou shalt not /
commit adultery, thou shalt not /
stear-these, dear cOntrereS, il we 1
may judge by the context, are not
more obligatory than that ninth,
"thOu shalt not bear false Witness"
And now we imagine ourselves met
with a regular tempest of protesta-
tions on the part of the political
daily press. "WhatP they will
say, "do you expect, oh unreason-
able editor, to find strict veracity
and carefully weighed judicial inn
partiality in the daily partisan press
during a presidential campaign
Do you hold that every mOrsel of
aggressive indictment should be
scrutinized with microscopic accu-
racy and tested and cross-questioned
like a witness in the chancery court
before it is admitted as ammunition
for the campaign? Your demand
Is revolutionary! What becomes of
the spicy paragraphist? What is to
be done with the scandal last re-
celved by the local executive COM
mittee, or raked up by the volunteer
reporter, if everything is to be flat
tened out and analysed till the life
is crushed out of it? Do you expect
the contest of the day to be argued
out like metaphysical thesis in the
hands of John Stuart Mill?"
Well, no; we give up the daily {
partisan press; that shall take its
course without protest :
from us. The ephemeral lie Of to- I
day shall be suffered to fiutter for its {
day, and, when finally killed off, to {
be superseded by the flimsier lie of !
tomorrow. This thing must go on, l
as it will go on, until readers are ed
ucated to demand better things.
We, at least, will attempt no strug- {
gle against it.
1t is not with the daily partisan I
press that we are now dealing, but 8
we have a periodical literature that t
processes to move, and ought to be
required to move in higher plane, 7
but does not so move. /
By single instance we will Illus 5
trate our meaning, promising that it
Is one instance selected out Of hum
lreds. A monthly 6rOchureis printed a
in New York by A. s. Barnes 4 Co., t
entitled "The International Re e
view" Everything in the physiog- n
lOmy of this periodical is so de- n
signed as to produce the impression t
hat a sphere of thought is intended Ii
ar above the popular passions and s,
of the hour and of the q
ocal circumstances. There are arti- V
les by an oxford (England) pro- a
essor, by Partisan litterateur, by g
/ transcendental aesthetic in Massa-
husetts, and other authors of high
,retensiOn and sandwiched in l'
.mong these is a political article "
Untitled The Presidential Elec- n
ion," by John Jay, of New York, %
o which we propose to give some &c
ttention. We do not object to this a
rticle that it is partisan in its char &
cter, or that its positions should st
e those of the republican party. In re
avs like these it is rather TO a mans
iscredit to have no political adhe-
.on, and we are always ready to -,
i've consideration to the arguments -H
( a political antagonist. But we do n
Dok for a broader statement of prin- ~
pile and more rigid logic in argu- II
lent when we read the articles of 70
re international than we here find. II
I,aso L., a ba0lutolxv s,ofhs, an Il, - b,,4 at