NOTES AND QUER - M.S.
DIE police courts are again full of outrages on women, especially the outrage of sheer brutal violence of husbands against the wives. The cases are exceptional, no doubt, but more in degree than in nature ; and besides these extreme instances which provoke the interference of the police, there must be a common level of brutal tyranny which does not rise high enough to attract the notice of the public guardian. What numbers of women, then, must pass through life, first as children under the infliction of brutal parents, and then as wives regarding such treatment by husbands as a normal condition of human existence ! Some voluptuaries in this art of wife-torture find their ingenuity taxed for new cruelties : the last invention is that of dragging out of her bed, again and again, a woman who has just passed her accouchement ; a refinement of depraved motive which attests the excess of endemic mental disease in these low classes of civilized mankind.
Indignant spectators feel their own ingenuity taxed to discover a proper treatment for the savage animals, and we have had various proposals,—public flogging, perpetual slavery, privation of civil rights, divorce, and, the most telling perhaps of all, the staining of the ruffian's nose with a black die. From some recent cases one fact appears which is very melancholy : any castigation which is practicable in an English land has a termination, and the brutes return home.
A country clergyman has supplied the Times with a new corre- spondent at Gallipoli, who appears to have his eyes about him to somewhat more purpose than the gentleman professionally trained in taking notes. While the latter was pitying the soldiers for the dearth of food, and their not knowing how to get it, or how to buy it, here is a corporal in the ranks who can tell where to buy a sheep for half-a-crown or two shillings, or even for fivepence ; who knows moreover the price of tobacco, coffee, tea, and bread—the last being a penny per pound. Seldom has a price-current had a more pregnant meaning than this simple statement of figures. It amounts at once to refutation and sarcasm.
The Railway interest, or, as it may be called, the Accident in- terest, has a reprieve. It has secured its wish, and every railway company is now left to enjoy its relations with hostile companies, uninterrupted by the Government. The " fighting lines " may still vaunt their bloodstained glories, and contending directors may re- gard passengers as their special preserve : no poaching allowed to the Board of Trade.
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