We refer, of course. to Dr. Benson's letter, which was
published in Wednesday's Times, on the subject of the part which his Grace and Cardinal Manning and certain other gentlemen have taken in relation to the recent revelations of the Pall Mall Gazette. The Archbishop says that he has not approved the action of the Pall Mall. He depre- cated, he says, the modes of inquiry adopted, and never con- cealed his disapprobation of them. " With respect to the dissemination of this literature," he says, "it has been need- lessly forced upon the attention of many whose assent or dis- sent was of no importance to the decision, and some of whom may be, I fear, the worse for the knowledge." Still, his Grace held himself bound, when the Pall Mall was charged with putting fabricated statements before the world, to look into the facts of the ease ; and he did so, without, however, asking for " the names of persons supposed to be implicated," holding that the existence of a prosperous trade can be proved without hearing the names of the customers. His Grace concludes by saying, what is doubtless both strictly true and very important, that the atrocities revealed are the "natural sequel soon or late of what is called ordinary immorality." And it is just because this is so, that we have throughout condemned unsparingly the circulation of a sensational class of literature which will spread to all the winds the seeds of "ordinary immorality," and produce in the years to come a loathsome crop, fortyfold, sixty- fold, or a hundredfold.
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