Northern Times. — 1859-03-28 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

THE TRADE IN VICE AND IMMORALITY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NORTHERN TIMES. Sir,—l believe it is a somewhat unusual, and decidedly dangerous practice, to venture a tilt against a legitimate newspaper article, when it is shielded by the mighty power of the editorial plural, but truth and common sense alike demand my protest against an article which appeared in your paper of Friday, under the above title. As the " Amateur lecturer" in question, whose " unworthy and mischievous" remarks have excited your contributors inelegant expressions of assumed virtuous indignation, will you permit me to state•that the few words introduced on the social evil question in my recent lecture, have been entirely perverted and misapplied. I did not utter a single word in extenuation of what I truly termed the greatest evil in the world, but I deprecated the injudicious conduct of those " meddling gentlemen," who were driving the " unfortunates" from their own vile haunts, where They had to be sought by those who were depraved enough to associate with them, unto the streets and outskirts of the town, where they plied their infamous vocation in open day, and before those whose virtue and goodness should never be contaminated by such close neighbourhood to immorality. I also said—earnestly •enough God knows—that the evil these meddlers would scourge was not of to-day alone but of ages past, that it would stain the earth with its foulness to the great day of judgment, and that the puny opposition of vain and bigotted men would only add fuel to the flames. I further declared that these self-abrogated social evil reformers were not able to sweep the world of its refuse, and that there were thousands of " unfortunates" at this moment hovering between the struggles of poor Hood's heroine in the " Song of the Shirt" and his wretched suicide in " Bridge of Sighs," who might he reclaimed, but they could not be exterminated. The writer of the article in your paper complains that I illustrated my argument by quoting from scripture the case of the women taken in adultery, quite keeping out of mind the admonition, "Go and sin no more." Let my words speak for themselves. After denouncing the attempts of the self-constituted Society for the Suppression of Vicious Practices to abolish social evil by exterminating rather than reforming its wretched followers, I said : " Of a different nature was poor, sickly, large-hearted Tom Hood. He, too, had studied the fearful history of vice, but he did not cast its victims from him as loathsome and hideous objects. He remembered that, with all their sin and erium, (Amy outtl rrayaa, Utu,t, Ow  forgave the poor fallen adultress, and commanded those amongst the howling throng who were sinless themselves to be the first to cast the stone." If I was wrong in using this scriptural illustration, my error did not arise from any " profane ' or "blasphemous" use of holy writ, as I will not yield, even to your writer, in my reverence for the New Testament. Neither was the allusion a palliation of prostitution, but it was a reproof to those vain, stone-hearted, meddling bigots, who appear  to think that they, and only they, are destined, by trickery and sham, to effect a revolution which their intellectual and moral superiors are not able to achieve. Sir, I would rather occupy my present position, even as a victim of your wrath, than stand in the shoes of those men who have so unwisely attempted to usurp a power which they 'can only maintain by underhand treachery, straight-laced bigotry, and un-English assassination of character. I am almost inclined to think (and pardon me, if I am wrong), that the article in your paper of Friday, redolent as it was with foul and disgusting language, is the production of a member of th precious society under whose ban I have evidently fallen, for it lacks the manly and independent tone which usually characterises your " leaders," and substituted malicious invective for sound remonstrance. I have sufficient faith in your love of fair play to believe that you will give this hurried letter a corner in your paper of Monday. I would have supplied it yesterday, but, through my absence from home, I did not receive your paper of Friday until this morning - —Yours, &c  CHARLES MILLWAR  Hull, 26th March, 1859,