The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-09-26
Aids so . osdinary Immoralisv '.

Of Archbishop Bensonsa latter in the
 ZiSsss, the London Sbecksker says:
 The archbishop says that he has hot approved the action of the Pal Mall Ga- sefke. He deprecated. he says, the modes ot inquiry adopted, and never concealed his disapprobation Of them. With re- srect to the dissemination of th.s hseya- tule," he says, "ia has been needlessly forced upon the attention of many whose assent or dissent was of no importance to the decision, and some of whom may be, fear, the worse for the knowledee.s ? Still, his grace held himself bound, when the PaN Mall Gasekks was charged with putting fabricated statements before the world, to look into the facts of the case {; and he did so without, however, asking for "the names of persons supposed to be implicated, holding that the existence of prosperous trade can be proved with out hearing of the names of the custom CTS. His grace concludes by saying what is doubtless both strictly true and very important, that the atrocities revealed are the natural sequel soon or late of what is called ordinary immortality" And it is just because this is SC, that we have throughout condemned unsparingly the circulation of sensational class of litera- ture which will spread to all the winds the seeds of ordinary immortality" and produce in the years to come loathsome crop, forty-fold, sixty-told or a hundred fold.
 We are quite sure that the two arch bishops were equally earnestly-equally passionately-concerned to take the part which they considered most likely to put a stop to the evils disclosed. But we wish with all our hearts that they had earlier, more publicly and more vigorous ly denounced the course adopted by the PaH Mall Gazette, and had wholly de- clined to take any responsibility on be. half of men who had opened the food gates of this moral sewer, and discharged 1t on the world at large. Moreover, as the archhishcrs did .sk- this responsi- bility, we think they should have satisfied themselves that at least some of the in- dividual cases alleged were actual facts. The abduction of Eliza Armstrong, it is now asserted with considerable show of evidence, was brought about by an agent of the Salvation army, who hired her from her mother protessedly to assist in ordinary service, and who removed her first to "home" in Winchester, and then to some place in France, where she is beyond her mother reach. The home secretary stated on Tuesday in his place in parliament that he has submitted the case to the law officers ot the crown and there seems reason to suppose that this abduction of Eliza Armstrong is at the bottom of one of the most horrible stories circulated in fact, that the child had been sent out of the country in order tn at the exact truth about her may not be known. We hope it may not turn ou, that any nominally religious organization has been concerned in concocting sensa- tions of this demoralzng kind Yet surely the authority of the archbishops should not have been given to the reve- lations without at least some attempt to sift mysti6cations like these. Surely, too, if, as the archbishop most truly says, "or- dinary immortality" is at the root of all the more diabolical forms of wickedness, he should have expressed his horror of the fragrant indifference to "ordinary inn morality" which has characterized the later tone of the journal referred to. The most ghastly feature of the recent agita- tion has been the tortuous labyrinth of good and evil l-evil men vaunting their championship of good, good men lending a certain shield to evll-in which it h as involved us.