Butler and landed him in the lowest depths of hell, and we pity even the devil the possession he has secured." The men who wrote these editorials are without exception young men who know nothing of slavery and scarcely anything of the war. The bitterness and hatred have been instilled in and taught them by their parents, and they are men who make and reflect the sentiment of their section. The South spares nobody else's feelings, and it seems a queer logic that when it comes to a question of right, involving lives of citizens and the honor of the government, the South's feelings must be respected and spared. Do you ask the remedy? A public sentiment strong against lawlessness must be aroused. Every individual can contribute to this awakening. When a sentiment against lynch law as strong, deep and mighty as that roused against slavery prevails, I have no fear of the result. It should be already established as a fact and not as a theory, that every human being must have a fair trial for his life and liberty, no matter what the charge against him. When a demand goes up from fearless and persistent reformers from press and pulpit, from industrial and moral associations that this shall be so from Maine to Texas and from ocean to ocean, a way will be found to make it so. In deference to the few words of condemnation uttered at the M. E. General Conference last year, and by other organizations, Governors Hogg of Texas, Northern of Georgia, and Tillman of South Carolina, have issued proclamations offering rewards for the apprehension of lynchers. These rewards have never been claimed, and these governors knew they would not be when offered. In many cases they knew the ringleaders of the mobs. The prosecuting attorney of Shelby County, Tenn., wrote Governor Buchanan to offer a reward for the arrest of the lynchers of three young men murdered in Memphis. Everybody in that city and state knew well that the letter was written for the sake of effect and the governor did not even offer the reward. But the country at large deluded itself with the belief that the officials of the South and the leading citizens condemned lynching. The lynchings go on in spite of offered rewards, and in face of Governor Hogg's vigorous talk, the second man was burnt alive in his state with the utmost deliberation and publicity. Since he sent a message to the legislature the mob found and hung Henry Smith's stepson, because he refused to tell where Smith was when they were hunting for him. Public sentiment which shall denounce these crimes in season and out; public sentiment which turns capital and immigration from a section given over to lawlessness; public sentiment which insists on the punishment of criminals and lynchers by law must be aroused. It is no wonder in my mind that the party which stood for thirty years as the champion of human liberty and human rights, the party of great moral ideas, should suffer overwhelming defeat when it has proven recreant to its professions and abandoned a position it created; when although its followers were being outraged in every sense, it was afraid to stand for the right, and appeal to the American people to sustain them in it. It put aside the question of a free ballot and fair count to every citizen and gave its voice and influence for the protection of the coat instead of the man who wore it, for the product of labor instead of the laborer; for the seal of citizenship rather than the citizen, and insisted upon the evils of free trade instead of the sacredness of free speech. I am no politician but I believe if the Republican party had met the issues squarely for human rights instead of the tariff, it would have occupied a different position to-day. The voice of the people is the voice of God, and I long with all the intensity of my soul for the Garrison, Douglas, Sumner, Whittier and Phillips who shall rouse this nation to a demand that from Greenland's icy mountains to the coral reefs of the Southern seas, mob rule shall be put down and equal and exact justice be accorded to every citizen of whatever race, who finds a home within the borders of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Then no longer will our national hymn be sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, but every member of this great composite nation will be a living, harmonious illustration of the words, and all can honestly and gladly join in singing: My country! 'tis of thee, Of thee I sing. Land where our fathers died, Freedom does ring. INDIA'S THREE MORAL CANCERS. WHICH THE INDIAN MISSIONARY CONFERENce refused to CONDEMN. Even Christian people are so preoccupied with their own affairs and so quickly forget social facts brought under their notice, that it is only too probable some sincere Christians in England cannot understand the distress and indignation which has been aroused among well-informed Christian philanthropists by the refusal of the Decennial Conference of Indian Missionaries to express any opinion upon the great moral scourges of that continent. It is therefore necessary, however painful, to give the Christian public at home at least some hint of the actual facts which the Decennial Conference has treated with so much levity. As every English citizen is now personally and directly responsible to God for the government of India, it is impossible to evade responsibility by saying that the subject is disagreeable and by laying it on one side. Every Christian will be compelled to give an account to Christ for his action or apathy on these tremendous moral issues. It is urgently important, therefore, to know something of the facts. A representative of this journal has been in communication with those who have the best and the most recent knowledge. In the light of the information which he has carefully collected, we proceed to state the nature of the three moral evils which the great gathering of Indian missionaries refused in their corporate capacity to condemn. 1. THE INDIAN STATE REGULATION OF VICE. The Government of India and the military authorities are under the impression that they can improve the moral law of the universe. They therefore unblushingly license sin. Let us go to Lucknow and see their method. We enter the Serai-a barracks for fallen women, containing nearly a hundred one-room dwellings, built, owned, and maintained by our representatives in India. Each room in that British barracks of shame is numbered and oocupied by a registered native woman. In the open courtyard between the long rows of dwellings, a military policeman is stationed to keep order. To assist him there is here and there another Government official—a Mahaldarnee, a sort of forewoman of the registered women, who receives a monthly wage of ten rupees. A part of the business of these official women is to keep the Government hell supplied with fresh victims. These are drawn principally from the large class of child widows. There is also an official tariff for sin. Such places exist in nearly every military quarter in India. Every year ten thousand soldiers, or "mere boys," as Lord Wolseley calls them, are sent out to India for five years, and there by the English Government are drawn into vice by a system which the British nation has refused to tolerate at home, and which was utterly unknown in India until we introduced it. In most stations the public women are usually examined once a week by the European or native doctor. This is in order to provide "safe" vice for our young soldiers, although of course, these evil medical dodges are delusive. Besides this examination each Dhai (the woman in charge) is expected to examine the women at least twice or thrice weekly. The hapless victims submit to this because the choice lies between starvation and submission. To show how this examination tends to the increase of vice, it need only be said that the soldiers' visits are more frequent after the known examination day. When the ten thousand men who replace their fellows in India find such ample and careful provision made for lust, it is not surprising that they soon imagine vice to be necessary for men. The officers and generals who carry out the system become drilled in the same ideas. We do not wonder, under these circumstances, to read in The Times of India that "more than one-half of the total number of European troops in India in 1890 were absolutely unfit to go into the field as the result of self-indulgence." Continuing, The Times of India says: "It is now 1892, and if the same rate of increase has been maintained-and there is reason to believe that it has been maintained-the condition of the army in India to-day, so far as two-thirds of its number is concerned, can be little short of rotten." The fact is the so-called medical "protection" of our boy soldiers is as unreal as it is blasphemous. Some may imagine that an end was put to all this by the vote in the House of Commons in June, 1888, which condemned any legislation that enjoined, authorized, or permitted the licensing or regulation of the sin of impurity in India. These instructions were carried out in the Colonies, thanks to Lord Knutsford; but in India it was otherwise. There we have been deceived and mocked in the performance. It is true that the Indian Contagious Diseases Act has been repealed, but a new Cantonment Act has been put in force by the Viceroy in Council, which has revived nearly all the iniquities and infamies of the previous laws. What has been described here takes place under it. But God is not mocked. We in England now reap that which we allow to be sown in India. The soldiers in India at the end of their short service are shipped home and let loose in England with their artificially stimulated and unnatural lust thirsting to be satiated. By these regulations the virtue of thousands of English women is endangered. The European traffic is largely an effect of the markets of vice established and promoted by the Anglo-Indian system of legalized debauchery. We need not dwell upon the effect of all this deliberate and systematic deviltry on the heathen, before whom our soldiers and other representatives pose as Christians." What, above all, do Indian women think of us? II. THE INDIAN OPIUM TRADE. Our opium traffic is a triple infamy. It curses India, Burma and China. Lord Kimberley says that the revenue from this traffic cannot be dispensed with "for the present." In that particular he closely follows Warren Hastings, who was impeached on this, among other points, and defended himself by saying that it had at least enriched the East Indian Company by half a million sterling. The victims generally begin by smoking opium twice a day, at morning and night, for an hour at a time. After two or three months' use they are completely in the grip of the habit. That is, they cannot leave it off for one day without great suffering. The amount smoked varies according to the means of the individual and the length of the time he has indulged. In multitudes of cases they realize the grip of the habit, and seek to be released. But they are so mastered by it, so incapable of effort, that they are rarely able to endure the physical ordeal of absolute abstention from their habit, which is essential if they are to be free. It is necessary to place the victims under restraint for about ten days before the awful craving is stayed. One point to which our attention is particularly called is this: The Roman Catholic, the German, the Swiss, the Scandinavian, the American and British Churches of China and Japan, without one exception, exclude the opium smoker, grower and seller from church membership. For the sake of revenue we tempt men with that the ordinary use of which will debar them from becoming members of the different Christian churches. In India the churches have no such restriction. The opium traffic places untold difficulties in the way of missionary work. Opium smokers are looked upon as furthest from the kingdom of God. Archdeacon Wolfe says that it is almost impossible to make any impression of a moral or spiritual nature on the victims of opium. Hudson Taylor actually declares that opium does more harm in a week than all our Christian missionaries are doing good in a year. Not only are the natives of China debarred by the use of the drug from becoming Christians, but our conduct with respect to the traffic has alienated others who are not victims, but who are wide awake to the results of our infamous system of raising revenue. The amount of opium produced in India now is about 108,000 chests yearly, each chest being 140 lbs. in weight. Half of this is grown in British India, the remainder in native States directly under British control. 1,000,000 acres of land in India are devoted to its cultivation. If it be asked what India has to do with opium in China the answer is-everything. Five-sixths of Indian-grown opium is not for Indian consumption, but for export to China and elsewhere. The Indian consumption is comparatively small; but it is growing. It is much larger now than in China at the beginning of the century. If action were taken at once |