The Potteries Examiner : — 1878-03-16 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

PROFLIGACY AND MURDER.  The vices like greyhounds are leashed in couples. No flagrant crime stands by itself. There is a fraternity or brotherhood of the passions. Theft and lying combine well together. Avarice and dishonesty are closely allied. In like manner lechery and inhumanity, libertinism and murder are near relations. Our daily and weekly records of crime furnish us with frightful proofs of this startling fact. Domestic virtue and household purity are sapped to their deepest foundations by the prevalence of unchastity and the abounding current of licentiousness. One crime opens the door to the intrusion of another and a greater one. The man or woman who begin, with what they deem is merely a harmless indulgence of their sensuous tastes, at the expense of their moral obligations, find themselves eventually led on to the committal of ta.ch acts of baseness, that if a fortune teller had dared to predict that ever they could so disgrace themselves, they would tell the d irkeyed sybil to her face that she lied in her throat and deserved to be horsewhipped for her base and lying insinuations. Yet these very persons by parleying with the foe, and trifling with little acts of indelicacy go on from step to step along the sloping pathway that leads to the chambers of confusion, and finally plunge themselves in the depths of infamy, sinking down to the faetid lairs of hopeless perdition. Vice mo4ly bedizens itself in the alluring guise of harmless dalliance, and mockingly spurns the caut.i3n, openly uttered, or tacitly ex.  pressed, that the batched egg of easy virtue generally develops itself into the cock•a-trice of sliameless profligacy. The chsiaber of horrors is the natural sequel to the flowery but seductive arbors of self indulgence and innocent flirtation.  The parental roof-tree is to frequently the hotbed of those raging passions which devour their miserable victims, as Saturn is said to have devoured his children. Like begets like. The sottish father and the dissipated mother nurse up their children for the felon's cell and the convict prison. The restraints of morality are contemned, the maxims of virtue are treated with disdain, and the offspring of licentious vice go on from one degree of crime to another until the fair image of God is obliterated from the soul, and the hideous lineaments of the Evil One takes its usurped place. There is a wide distinction between levity and cheerfulness—between immodest frivolity and conscience-governed mirth. The one leaves no regret, whilst the other plants a sting in the soul—the one leads to the palace of health and the tranquil chamber of contentn:ent, whilst the other conducts to the dungeons of disorder and the dark cells of unassuaged misery and blank despair. Every now and again we are appalled at the report of some loathsome and diabolical crime that almost leads us to loa,he the human nature we share in common with onr fellow-creatures. Disgusted and terrified at the repulsive horrors of society around him, the gentle spirit of the poet Cowper led him to exclaim—  0! for n lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of sbude. But we runA shun the wish for a cloistered and cowardly abandonment of life's earnest work. Our path of duty is plain before us, namely, to avoid, first of all, the incipient approach to impurity in ourselves ; and thou, secondly, to discourage the growth of evil principles in the smallest beginnings, in our friends, relatives, neighbours, and acquaintances. All this is quite compatible with a generous pity for the criminal portion of our population. The Son of Man—Maria's guileless offspring—rebuked criminality both in rich and poor with unresting emphasis, and yet shed tears of tenderest pity over the iniquitous throngs of the metropolis of His native land. A sour face and a biting tongue aggravates the disorder they would fain attempt to heal. A melting compassion, rather than a soul-hardening rigour, is necessary to the reformer of flagrant abuses and the regenerator of social crime. Men and women will be won by kind looks and loving words, whereas they will be but driven into a more determined course of vicious action by harsh censure and stern rebuke. With all this, there should be combined the charity that never faileth and that suffereth long. Like the Master, we should never fail nor be discouraged, but witness to the last, in death as in life, our animosity towards the sin, whilst displaying our loving pity for the unfortut ate offender.