Mr. Lonsdale the other day preached a sermon in the
Temple Church to prove that the English of the nineteenth century are one of the most brutal races that ever existed. Allowing always for the million or two of Englishmen whom religion and education and the police-court and the hunger for money have partially .civilized, it is not certain that he was wrong. On the 17th Sep- tember a pitman of Spen, Durham, returning home drunk, found no supper ready, and began beating his wife. He continued that amusement, varying his instrument occasionally, for nearly an hour and a half, slowly beating the woman to death with the poker and tongs and hearth-brush and fire-shovel. He was drunk, but other pitmen heard him doing it, saw him doing it, knew he was killing the woman, and remonstrated but never interfered. One man sat and watched him, another smoked a pipe with him by the dead body. They were afraid they said, but it would not be very safe to tell them so, and the truth was they thought the man had a right to beat his wife, and if he killed her that was his look-out. Meanwhile they enjoyed the excitement as they will enjoy seeing Atkinson hanged, feeling like all other savages pleased with the "cruddle of the blood, produced even in savages by human suffering. What an iniquity it would be to make these men send their children to school under penalty of a fine for every day they were absent !
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