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    ATMOSPHERE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . On Monday night the exuberant merriment of the House of Commons was excited by a statement made by Sir "William Molesworth , the Commissioner of Works , in answer to a question put by Lord D . Stuart , as to what powers the G-overmnent possessed to prevent or remove certain " noxious effluvia" which

    appear at intervals to render the " honour of a seat" in that assembly an extremely questionable pleasure . Sir W . Molesworth stated in a gay and airy tone that the effluvia in question were inevitable and incurable . The House of Commons is subject to the evils incident to any other establishment , domestic or manufacturing , situated on the banks of the Thames "between Hammersmith

    and Blackwall . When the tide goes out a vast surface of mud is left , enriched by sewage , to "be played , upon by the rays of the sun ; and the sun in July being equal to penetrating even that atmosphere in which the arrangements of our civilisation envelope our capital city , it appears that ail atmosphere of decomposed gases is given out , — - piercing the windows and entrances of the

    contiguous Houser—so painfully pungent as to drive the most assiduous of our public men to the Palace-yard cab-stand , and thence - — -anywhere , anywhere out of the House . It is further stated by the elegant Commissioner of Works , who seems like other delicate men to revel occasionally in exceptional allusions , that the-workmen employed in the completion of the new Palace of Westminster are

    provided by the constitution , for whom they in turn are arranging ,-with a single watercloset , which , under certain tidal circumstances , also comes within the influence of the sun , and gives out a second set of special odours , varied like those of Cologne * and easily recognisable by the practised xnember— just as in a ball-room may be distinguished the scent of flowers from the perfume of ladies' toilets . Sir "William deplored this state of things , lmt candidly confessed that

    he saw no remedy ; and all he could say in reply to the asphixiated entreaties of Lord Dudley Stuart was that he hoped the House of Commons would see the necessity of an early prorogation - Thus our constitutional machinery , it is acknowledged by devoted partisans of our institutions , is dependent for its easy working on the state of the Thames tide . The ¦ gloomy hear-hears from the wreakly members , interrupting the more reckless laughter oi the more robust portion of our younger

    conscript fathers , revealed beyond aLl doubt that it would be less infamous in the country to sentence its chosem law-givers to the subterranean horrors of a coal-mine than to demand that they should watch over the common weal in a house smelling as if of the collected dead cats which are thrown during a general election at unpopular candidates . In th © sitting of the morning of thab day on which Sir William made this statement , and in another morning sitting since , the

    attention of the House of Commons has been exclusively occupied in considering the clauses of the " Bribery Bill . This is a measure constructed with the vlovr of tempering in some way the electoral corruption of our picked constituencies . Ifc is a bill of many clauses , clause after clause attacking somo special tendency of our eloetoru to plunge into political impurity . And it is opposed , when opposed at all , merely on tho ground that constituencies out of which tho House of Commons proceeds arc incurably corrupt .

    Here , then , wo have a rovelafcion as to the physical and moral atmosphere of tho House of Commons . Surely afc the iioxt Academy Exhibition tho inevitable " portrait of an M . P . " will represent a gentloman holding hia nose between Ins fingers !

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    THE DOMESTIC MOLOCH . Or all adulterations of society that one is unquestionably the worst , which some of out readers will denounce us for alluding to . We shall be accused of being revolutionary and subversive , because we point to the existence of a plague spot far more pestiferous than the sources of the cholera , more hideous than the influences of thieving and pick-pocket crime , viler than even the lowest kinds of debauchery which parade themselves in the street . We say , that infinitely worse than this open defiance of the law , is the hypocrisy which , while denouncing crime , introduces it into

    otherwise uncorrupted society . We have lately had exposures like that of Alice Leroy ; this week a second plaintiff proceeds against Marmaysee , the defendant in the case of Heginbal ; and these cases are singular only for their publicity . They prove what we have formerly asserted , that amongst the respectable classes of society exist practices which those classes of society pretend ip denounce , but which they indulge under cover . The evidence of this corruption continues to increase to our hands . In a case

    recently exposed at Clerkenwell , a girl named Bradshawe was entrapped into a house of vice under pretence of domestic service . Tlie Liverpool Mercury bas referred to a system of abduction organised in several large pro * vincial towns , such as Derby , Xeeds , Manchester , Liverpool , &c , to entice from their homes , for the worst purposes , young girls of ages ranging from ten to seventeen yeais . The Mbrning Chronicle learns " from other sources that there are accredited agents of certain London houses established at the

    principal railway stations to look out for victims , who are regularly consigned to them like poultry or cattle . " The profits of places of this kind vary in a scale of indefinite range . In the case of Reginbal , the earnings of the girl were above 20 Z . a week—a thousand a year ; and our contemporary calculates , with great

    probability , that Marmaysee would make of the receipts and payments of one girl alone 7501 a year : —that is assuming , which wo cannot , that these receipts would be regular and continuous . But Marmaysee was not the only example of the traffic , though one of the most successful . The police know' that there arc a considerable number of houses in London

    devoted to the same kind of trade , which have an infinitude of branches . Statistics would be baffled in the endeavour to trace "the entire number of the persons engaged in . it , or their gross receipts ; but the aggregate revenue must be immense— -worth that of a German principality at least . Nay , if wo could follow tho species of income-tax ¦ which is voluntarily paid , in all classes , wo might see that London returns to the collectors in this Mud of revenue far moro than Mr . Gladstone exacts under tho naine of his hated impost .

    But the worst part of tho evil wo say , at present ia , that all this is done under the pretence of a totally different stato of things . Speak with some freedom of divorce , pronounce ifc a thing which might bo rendered more facilo , as it is in many of tho states of America , and you will bo denounced by numbers of those respectable persons ^ vho are constantly infringing tho laws of marriage , right and loft ; divorcing themselves

    weekly and daily ; temporarily but lavishly endowing wives whom thoy accept and repudiato -with more than Turkish facility ; and who perpetuate a state of things which not only introduces adulteration into tho very hearts and homos of Englishmen innumerable , but dooms those very wives of tho hour , tho toys and creatures of tho system , to a promaturo mortality . Five years is reckoned tho term of a successful life in this

    profession . At any honest occupation a woman may earn her 5 s ., 6 $ ., or perhaps 10 s ., a week , and die of tedium , bad food , and fatigue at thirty-five . But in tliis superior trade , she can earn 201 . a week , more or less , and finish off in five years . And yet , we say , that this sacrifice of young girls—some of the pick of our female population—is not a sacrifice equal to the still more enormous sacrifice in hypocrisy and bad heart .

    For pointing at it , for speaking of it out aloud , we shall be called " improper" and " immoral ; " and yet , we say that there is so much of good feeling in English society , that this heinous system could not continue if it were talked about . There was a yet worse horror in one of our colonies ; but that horror lasted only so long as propriety turned away

    its modest face from the picture . At last , some honest and hold men put forth their strong hands to tear down the veil . One of these men was Sir William Molesworth , whose report on transportation in New South Wales outraged the quiet English feeling of decency . Transportation * was stopped .

    Sir 3 ? rederick Pollock takes the exactly opposite course . He advises Marmaysee to plead the ' " immoral purpose" in bar of the action against himself , and gives the advice with the very object of stifling publicity . Declining to accept that suggestion , Marmaysee . was punished by being ordered under arrest as the keeper of the house . Yet evidently his offence was not the existence of such establishments - ^ - which Sir "Frederick

    can scarcely hope to extinguish—but the public appeal to law . Sir Frederick would , it seems , prefer silence and no law . Assuredly lie will not put down vice at home .

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    THE HOT WEATHER . We know , or ought to know by this time , the land where the Cyprus and myrtle are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime . But We never sufficiently recognise that our own private and national virtues are very much the result of a climate producing plants and fruits , such as the cabbage and the gooseberry , of a less gorgeous character . As a sensible people we are indebted , very much , for that well-balanced civilisation to which wo

    so frequently allude , to the circumstance that the quicksilver in our barometers generally stands half way up the tube . We are such splendid animals , for physical purposes , fox tho same climactic reasons which explain our superiority over the roat of Europe in our beef , our mutton , and our race horses ; and our steady political progress , or endurance , and

    our reluctance to rush into revolutions , may be traced to tho state of caloricin our bodies . Tho British constitution , like a fair , quiet , but prosperous , British landscape , is mainly tho growth of circumstances originating in a very slight dogreo with , the wisdom or ploughing of _ our ancestors . Physically , tho fact ia univorsally admitted . Tho hot sun excuses innumerable villains in our dramas and our

    poetry . The degradation of whole nations has boen attributable to the over facile production , by tho untorturod soil , of simple food—and also to tho -want of nppotifco which tho climate superinduces for any other aliment than tho unlnxurious rico , the olive , or tho potato . Wo excuse a South American revolution as

    wo excuse a South American earthquake ; and when , wo talk of the unsettled condition of Spain or Italy wo only moan tho necessity of despotic treatment lor a people who suffer by tho proximity of the sun , as dogs are said to suffer- when tho moozi comes noarest to tho earth . But also the- genius of a people ia very much dependent upon tho Btoinoch of a people , and political conditions are inseparably

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    7 G 8 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 29, 1854, page 708, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2049/page/12/