We are quite sure that the two Archbishops were equally
earnestly,—equally passionately,—concerned to take the part which they considered .most likely to put a stop to the evils disclosed. But we wish with all our hearts that they had earlier, more publicly, and more vigorously denounced the course adopted by the Pall Mall, and had wholly declined to take any responsibility on behalf of men who had opened the flood-gates of this moral sewer, and discharged it on the world at large. Moreover, as the Archbishops did take this responsibility, we think they should have satisfied themselves that at least some of the individual cases alleged were actual facts. The abduction of Eliza. Armstrong, it is now asserted with a con- siderable show of evidence, was brought about by an agent of the Salvation Army, who hired her from her mother professedly to assist in ordinary service, and who removed her first to a " home " in Winchester, and then to some place in France, where she is beyond her mother's reach. The Home Secretary stated on Tuesday in his place in Parliament that he has submitted the case to the Law officers of the Crown ; and there seems reason to suppose that this abduction of Eliza Armstrong is at the bottom of one of the most horrible of the stories circulated,— in fact, that the child has been sent out of the country in order that the exact troth about her may not be known. We hope it may not turn out that any nominally religious organisation has been concerned in concocting sensations of this demoralising kind. Yet surely the authority of the Archbishops should not have been given to the revelations without at least some attempt to sift mystifications like these. Surely, too, if, as the Archbishop most truly says, " ordinary immorality " is at the root of all the more diabolical forms of wickedness, he should have expressed his horror of the flagrant indifference to " ordinary immorality " which has characterised the later tone of the journal referred to. The most ghastly feature of the recent agitation has been the tortuous labyrinth of good and evil,—evil men vaunting their championship of good, good men lending a certain shield to evil, —in which it has involved us.
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