IMMORAL SANCTION.
WE have repeatedly, observed, in this print, that the lesson continually taught by the public in the treatment of conduct is that patience is the worst policy. Poverty may starve and perish unheeded and unaided in meek endurance ; but let the sufferer attempt suicide, or commit a petty robbery, and sympathy is ex cited and relief poured in from a hundred -bounteous hands. Wives are ill-treated by their husbands,—if they submit, bear, and forbear : if they hold that no misconduct of another can release them from their own fealty to virtue,—if Christian duty prove stronger than pique, and fortitude stills the motions of resentment, —society gives such a part at most a cold and silent approbation. But let the tyrant rouse the termagant—let the passions have their sway, with reference to no law but the forbidden one of re taliation,—let the decorums, the maternal regards, the duties, be given to the winds, and the injured prefer courting alliance with vice to the endurance of wrongs, showing the satisfaction of a pure heart and an approving conscience to be esteemed as nothing, and the stomach for revenge of a licentious appetite,—let these things, we say, appear, and we have a heroine greeted with shouts of applause by a moral British public ! No one acquainted with the tenor of this print will charge us with overstrained prudery; but we declare that the reported reception of Lady WILLIAM Lexerox, after the recent exposure, is the most disgusting depravity we have ever noted in public morals. The performance and its acceptation were, under circumstances, of equal and appropriate propriety. JUVENAL'S Sixth Satire has nothing completer in grossness of delight. The newspaper statements of "the kind feeling" subsisting between the heroine of the night and the lusty singer Mr. WOOD,—not to mention the more distinct imputations, —must have filled the mind of every spectator with the idea of certain relations between the parties ; and then, how interesting the piece chosen 1.—how delicate the part of the lady acting love with the alleged paramour of her election !—the moral audience looking with approving indulgence on the scene of dalliance, and cheering the applications with the amiable zeal of the God of the Gardens—the God of such gardens as Covent Garden. To hold the candle, is an office of proverbial shamefulness ; but they who have held the candle have hitherto also held the tongue, and the practice is new of hallooing on to the indulgence of the passions. In excuse for these excesses, the wrongs of Lady WILLIAM LENNOX are cited. We do not deny them—there are circumstances of meanness which render any other misconduct probable : but we contend, that the ill-used wife least deserved sympathy when she had renounced the endurance that was her bounden duty as a wife and-a Christian. Rumour represents her as more than renouncing duty—as courting vice for revenge ; but on that allegation we do not now dwell. Our object is to shame the public depravity: with the objects of its undue favour we have little concern. Allowances are certainly to be made for human infirmity; and the actress who had withdrawn herself from her husband, after very credible provocations, should have been received without censure, but also without approbation. In no case of the kind can there be any ground for approbation : we may admire and praise patient suffering ; but domestic rebellion, with its cruel consequences to the dearest objects of domestic affection, though it may he pardoned, can never, without injury to morality, be commended. The encouragement of the evil sanction will act where the degree of apologyfor it has no existence, and where passion will be prone to overrate the grounds of provocation. We think we have a right to demand from the public one of two things—either the adherence to the Moral code they profess, or the promulgation of a new system. If they will not be Christian, let it be known what they will be, and by what principles conduct is to be governed. We have as yet no written code in which it is laid down that a breach of duty on one side releases from obligation on the other, or that vice may be sought as a refuge from injury_ It is in humanity to resent rather than endure ; but it is not in Christianity, nor commended in any canons for domestic conduct that the world has ever yet seen. All that we ask is, that the public should understand what it is about—what it is approving—and with reference to what principles of action, and consideration of the effect of their sanction in ethics. .
The following account of the lady's reception, on the second night of her appearance, is from the Times; and we quote the accompanying reasoning, from which we dissent.
" On her appearance she was received with loud and marked applause, which, however, was carried to an extreme that seemed somewhat to exceed the bounds of reason. It is not unnatural, it is even just, that the public feeling should, under all the circumstances that are known respecting her situation, be excited in her favour. Whether the insinuations which have been made against her have any foun,lation, or whether, if she he culpable at all, the provocation she has received may extenuate her fault, are matters of which there is at present no proof; while the facts of her submitting for years to forego in public the rank to which she is entitled, and for which she has paid too dearly, and of her titled husband having debased himself by luxuriously revelling upon the profits of her talents, are notorious enough. .That considerable sympathy should be evinced towards her by the audience, is therefore not surprising ; but that sympathy loses some of its effect when it is expressed as vociferohsly as it has been lately. This opinion seemed to prevail last night, when, just as the clamour had subsided, a greasy, shockaleaded partisan in the pit, quoting Lord Eldon's celebrated burst of enthusiasm, roared out for one cheer more.' It produced instantaneous silence, and the noisiest of the applauders felt at once that they had at last reached the limits of necessary applause."
Cases of palliation are not cases for praise. The time for applauding the party was when she was labouring and suffering, not when, by resistance to a husband's authority, she had restored herself to the independence of a single state; • The anecdotes in circulation respecting this affair are in perfect keeping with the general character. We quote one, indicating sufficient coarseness on both sides.
"Words between Lord W. Lennox and Miss Paton ran rather high ; and, in reply to somr remark of his Lordship, insinuating that the lady was somewhat indebted to him for rank,' the lady, stung by the observation, and recollecting what she had done for his Lordship, warmly replied, When I first knew you, you had not a decent coat to your back.'" How delicate the suggestion of obligation !—how aptly chosen the subject of reference to the days of love and courtship—an old coat !
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