Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 134.djvu/325

Rh sultan and his parliament A parliament which has no power, and which can only state grievances, is not a parliament at all. It is only a rudimentary body out of which a parliament may one day, under new and favorable circumstances, be formed. What the Ottoman parliament would be like if its whole position were changed, and if it could really influence the government of the country, it is impossible to say. It might break down under the novel task or it might show unexpected capacities. Full justice ought to be done to the present parliamentary Turks. They are not ridiculous, they are dignified in the conduct of business, they are very much in earnest, and the intense misery they have seen or felt makes them too anxious for redress to permit of their being the pliant tools of a goverment. But they are only as yet on the threshold of real parliamentary existence, and whether they will ever get inside the sacred building, or how, if they enter, they will behave there, time alone can reveal.

 

 From The Otago Daily Times.

Rev. R. L. Stanford preached at All Saints' Church, Dunedin, on April 22nd, on the subject of "A Wrong-doing in our Midst." In the course of his sermon the reverend gentleman said: "I want to speak more especially about a wrongdoing in our midst which does, I fancy, escape attention, but which is producing evils of which we shall sooner or later have to bear the consequences. I refer to the wretched habit of keeping banks especially, but also some commercial houses, open half the night. Open, that is, in so far as the clerks are concerned. In the first place, the forcing young men to stay till nine or ten o'clock at least at work, night after night, is a defrauding of a neighbor, for there is an unwritten law here declaring that a certain wage is given for a certain time of labor. I don't think I exaggerate when I say that it is becoming the settled habit of the banks to keep the men in their employment at work till ten or eleven night after night, by a sort of irresistible moral pressure, which it is utterly impossible for them to resist. This miserable policy arises from two causes. One great cause of it is simply bad management. The other mere greediness. I understand that these young men are often by no means too busily employed all day. In some of those institutions which are the worst offenders, and where this is the case, the evil is one solely of bad management. In those cases where work goes on all day and half the night, it is simply a question of greediness. The place is short-handed, in the desire to give larger dividends, and every shareholder is concerned in the sin. I am well aware of the difficulty of dealing with a subject like this. It seems when we inquire into it to be just nobody's fault. It is one of those matters that ought to be banned by public opinion, and it can, I think, be cured in no other way. I should like to point out to you, some of whom may have brothers, or husbands, or sons, suffering under the enormous evil, the consequences that are almost certain to follow from this wrongdoing. It is simply impossible to hope that a young man, often a mere lad, entering one of these places, can go on leading a healthy, God-fearing, honest life, with nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to conceal, such as I love to think of as the ideal of a young man's life. God has implanted instincts of happiness and animal spirits in your son, which will find an outlet, healthy or unhealthy, as the case may be, To turn him out of his office at ten or eleven o'clock at night, after a whole day spent more or less in the vitiated atmosphere, is to deprive him of all means of healthy recreation, and as an inevitable consequence to drive him at last to unhealthy amusement. Don't suppose this a far-fetched prediction. I have seen this happen with my own eyes again and again in this country. You, the managers or shareholders in banks, you who have some influence more or less, and who are shutting your eyes and holding your tongues about this monstrous crime, are responsible before God for the ruin, moral and physical, of many a young man who might have lived to be a useful member of society. I trace swiftly his career. No chance is given the lad for cricket or boating, and so on. Every chance is given him for gambling and drinking at midnight. Gambling leads to debt, and debt leads to thieving. I say that we have all known young, promising lads run the gamut of disgrace, and lose their life's chances through nothing else but this miserable crime of keeping them at work all the evening. Do you ask how you can interfere? Oh, you can find plenty of ways if you really desire to bring about any moral reform. You can cut out these ulcers if you choose. Would to God it were only as easy to remedy the ill 