The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1916-05-09
BY EDGAR ILIFF.

BY ED6Ah bIIFTs
While the history of clubs In earlier
England is interesting 1t lacks the
fascination of the annals of the Eng
lish coffee houses. In the reign OF
Queen Anne coffee house history be
comes a great sweeping river, carry
ing upon its bosom the manners and
morals of the people, When we slide
into club life we seem to have be
come moored in little quiet nook
while the great rushing waters have
passed us by.
Ben Franklin, besides being about
everything else, was an ideal cluo
man. When he lived in London he
visited frequently the Royal Society
Club. He also had club of his own
which met every Thursday evening
at a coffee house in st. Paul's church
yard Here he met clergymen and
men of science and his genial soul
must have been truly at home. His
delightful letters home abound with
wit and anecdote He always refer
red to the Junto Club, founded by him
self in Philadelphia, with great affec-
ton. There are a few bright spots in
the coffee house days, but yet they
were dark and troublous times.
never open the pages Of history of the
time but ] shudder, just as one does
over the lurid lines OF Juvenal and
Suetonius.
Describes Bad Features.
There was crime that was brutal,
vice that was disgusting, women de-
based and frivolous, and amusements
coarse and inhuman. There were
prisons, stocks, pillories, witches,
ghosts, COLLINS, drunkards, thieves,
robbers, highwaymen, rakes. black
guards, uuacks There were great
schemes for rapid wealth, gambling
and a public distaste for slow and
ssteady gain There was In cities one
gin shop to every ten houses. Signs
hung at tavern doors, Drunk for
penny, dead drunk for two pence, and
straw for nothing" In tavern cellars
they kept dirty straw litters to cast
drunken beasts upon until they sober
/ ed I'D. In one year $4,000 persons
died In London from gin drinking.
There were no homes as we now
have them. There we're the galloWs
always grooming. the death cart for
ever creaking; rows of white-faced
women awaiting death by hanging for
stealing bread for famishiug children;
little children working, working
dreadful sights IN a heather world
women doing pack-horse work; toilers
going it sixteen hours day and no
more rights in law than horses: there
were discomfort, poverty, privilege,
profligacy; shrieks of wretched wom-
en- flogged; groans and piercing cries
of animals tortured in public amuse-
msnts; the clergy drunken and tndh-
ferent; and over all a church preach
IL e \ IN q
that Sydney Smith said: What a
pity that we have no amusements in
England except vice and religion"
John Wesley Arose.
| love to think that from that sea of
woe and misery there arose one John
Wesley, who threw to the winds all
the ancient and putrid ideas OF higher
and lower classes, and declared that
the church was for the people
I love to think that from that seath-
ing social caldron there came up
most remarkable people, called in de-
rision, "Quakers," beginning with the
name "Friends"-a people of whom
mot one good word is uttered in all
the literature of Queen Anne's reign;
people who. nevertheless, discovered
and preached the essential democracy
of the gospels a people who through
the most barbarous religious persecu-
ton in history held steadfastly to the
doctrine of mans equality; a people
who effected a revolution without
shedding brop of blood or striking
one blow in retaliation. Democratic
institutions and representative govern
ments owe much to the steady and
answering example of the early
Quakers-perhaps as much as to the
literature of Socrates and Plato or
the PHILOSOPHERS of Descartes and
Leibnitz. They are the only religious
sect calling forth praise from Paine
and Voltaire. England was visited by
Eoltaire for the sole purpose of going
to see English ouakers and he was
, we'll received Voltaire also contem-
plated migrating to Pennsylvania to
live In Quaker settlement.
Give Labor Dignity.
A body of people who gave dignity
TO labor by laboring themselves, and
who denied the value of all learning
except that which the world approp-
rates by its own intelligence, had in
its grasp lever to move the world;
and it's teaching of equality and the
high worth of all useful labor, must
vet rule society or else our ideals are
phantoms 1t is a dream of the time,
vet far away, where man shall be
erect, unbiased, scepterless, crown
less, swordless, gunless, king over
himself, Just, gentle, mild-the dream
of all philosophers from Plato to US
The sentiments of Thomas Paine on
tho equality of man are the inherit
ances he received from his mother.
who was an English Quakeress. 1t
must be said in the face of all the
slurs heaped upon the memory of this
patriot, that when he arose in the