St. Paul daily globe., 1891-12-06
ENGLISH VICE.


The GLOBE has published from day
to day during the past week, with such
omissions and eXpurgatiOns as decency
demanded, the story OF the eXtraordi-
nary domestic career of Earl RUSSELL,
an English lord of high degree. AS
suming that the evidence disclosed at
the trial of his suit with his wife is true,
there appears to be no sin in the cata-
logue OF shameful and unnatural crimes
of which ne has not been guilty. All
the forms of vice which so amaze the
modern reader of SUETONIUS seem to
have suggested themselves to his youth
ful imagination, and he had only to
dream of some outrageous exploit to
proceed to its actual conSummation. He
was equipped with health and an in
come equal TO his tastes, and he has run
riot with a prodigality and disregard
of Selt-restraint which entitle him to an
elevated niche in collection of the
worlds monsters of iDiquity.
Sir EDWARD CLARKE and Sir
CHARLES RUSSELL, who figured in the
GORDON CUNNING case, are pitted
against each other in the present in
stance also, and, according to all surface
indications. are netting a handsome in
come from the degeneracy Of the Eng
liSh ariStocracy. Either The art of per-
jury has been developed to point of
peculiar perfection in the British isle, or
the basis of morality on which the bet
ter classes have been supposed to rest
mas been seriously undermined. Woman
ScrapeS are characteristic of all times
aud peoples. and do not necessarily
augur decline in popular vigor or a
lowering of general tone. But all circles
of society seem there to be permeated
by taints and blemiShes of a more seri-
Gus sort. College professors and states
men, men about town and titled gentle
men, are sought after with uncommon
eagerneSs by the police courts, not to
answer tor the robust debaucheries
which are born of excess of animal
spirits and befit race accustomed to
the chase and the open air, but
to plead guilty or not guilty to
charges of foul outrages such as are
conceived in the fetid air of an Ottoman
seragliO by brains emascnlated through
excessive indulgence in opium and
nOXiouS eordials. The noisy misde-
meanOrS of Tom Jones are no longer in
vogue among Our kia across the sea.
They have been Supplanted by the
nameless vices depicted in the untrans-
latabie fiction of the modern French
school.
Another curious thing about all this
is suggested by the latest culprit'S
family history. Good blood flows in his
veins as does in the veins of Lord COLIN
CAMPBELL, an illustrious predecessor
of his in the same style of bad eminence.
By good blood the GLOBE means not
only the blood of prominent men, but of
men capable of earnest work and seri-
GUS achievement. No states man in
modern times has contributed more to
the cause of popular freedom than did
JOHN RUSSELL, and no contemporary
English peer has shown greater capacity
in the lines of refined intellectually
than the Duke of Argyle. And yet
out OF the loins of such chief
tains have sprung these enormities,
hunchbacked in disposition and born
with teeth for rending the fabric of de-
cency from the hour of their first de-
liyerance. The lesson, of course, is the
old one that there is no aristocracy ex-
cept the aristocracy of accomplishment,
and that the worlds monarchS are the
brave men who wreStle with circum-
stances and carve their own fortunes
| out of opportunity with the tools of in
dustry and persistence. No young man
with good health need be discouraged
because there are others bidding against
him who have the accumulationS of ear
| lier generations to draw OH for the con-
test. Such are not real competitors.
Even before the battle begins they will
faint by the roadside. or, if they go on
for little while, will grow discouraged
and surrender. The great prizes of life
are open to-day. as much as they ever
were in the years that are gone, to the
courageous and the determined who
| dare tc strive for them.