Some three years and a half ago (June 3, ’85), the paper startled the world of London by a prodigy of false, foul, and fulsome details in the shape of articles entitled “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.”  The object of the editor, Mr. William T. Stead, a quondam teacher in the London schools and a respectable Methodist strengthened by non- Conformist support, in starting this ignoble surprise on the public was much debated.  His partisans asserted that he had been honestly deceived by some designing knave as if such child-like credulity were any excuse for a veteran journalist!  His foes opined that under the cloak of a virtue, which Cato never knew, he sought to quicken his subscription list ever dwindling under the effects of his exaggerated Russophilism and Anglophobia.

But whatever may have been the motive, the effect was deplorable.  The articles, at once collected into a pamphlet (price two pence), as the “Report of the Pall Mall Gazette’s Secret Commission,” and headed by a laudatory quotation from one of the late Lord Shaftesbury’s indiscreetly philanthropic speeches, were spread broadcast about every street and lane in London.  The brochure of sixteen pages divided into three chapters delighted the malignant with such sensational section-headings as—­How Girls are Bought and Ruined—­Why the Cries of the Victims are not Heard—­Procuresses in the West End—­How Annie was Procured—­You Want a Maid, do You?—­The Ruin of Children—­A London Minotaur(?)—­The Ruin of the Young Life—­The Demon Child and—­A Close Time for Girls, the latter being intended to support the recommendation of the Lords’ Committee and the promise of a Home Secretary that the age of consent be raised from thirteen to sixteen.  And all this catchpenny stuff (price 2d.) ended characteristically with “Philanthropic and Religious Associations can be supplied with copies of this reprint on special terms.”  Such artless benevolence and disinterested beneficence must, of course, be made to pay.

Read by every class and age in the capital, the counties and the colonies, this false and filthy scandal could not but infect the very children with the contagion of vice.  The little gutter-girls and street-lasses of East London looked at men passing-by as if assured that their pucelages were or would become vendible at œ3 to œ5.  But, the first startling over men began to treat the writer as he deserved.  The abomination was “boycotted” by the Press, expelled from clubs, and driven in disgrace from the “family breakfast table,” an unpleasant predicament for a newspaper which lives, not by its news, but by its advertise meets.  The editor had the impudence to bemoan a “conspiracy of silence,” which can only mean that he wanted his foul sheets to be bought and discussed when the public thought fit to bury them in oblivion.  And yet he must have known that his “Modern Babylon” is not worse in such matters than half-a-dozen minor Babylons scattered over Europe, Asia, and America;