Editorials.

Judging by the storm it has raised about our ears, the innocent paragraph in our previous issue noting the downward career of a Chicago siren who lately made common cause with the Chicago "saints," was our trump editorial card. It seems to have given the nation at large, as well as some of our more sensitive friends, a very healthy shock. Saying nothing of the numerous newspapers that have quoted , attacked and denounced it, we have been asked something less than a thousand times: "Would you rather see a sister of yours a prostitute than a church-member?" We are just beginning to appreciate the situation of the abolitionist, who used to be asked so often "Would you like your daughter to marry a nigger?" Our answer has been: "Yes, if thereby she should escape becoming the embodiment of all the vices of the church; otherwise, no." Of course there are very many worthy persons in the church whom it would be an insult to compare with the inmates of a brothel. Our comparison was of institutions, not of individuals. So heavy is the fog of respectability hovering over the church that it has veiled from the eyes of our critics the fact that an institution whose patrons are ministered unto by men who sell their brains, hearts, and souls ought to stand much lower in the social scale than one whose patrons are ministered unto by girls who sell merely their bodies. Nine-tenths of the occupants of Christian pulpits are prostitutes of a far worse order than the unfortunate women whom social conditions force into the service of the lusts of their male parishioners. To be obliged to choose between syphilitic poison and the poison of hypocrisy is not a desirable situation, but, once confronted with so unenviable an alternative, we can conceive of no reason for hesitation.

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The London correspondent of the "Philadelphia Telegraph" thinks that Baker Pasha's military exploits in Turkey largely compensate for the "grave indiscretion" of which, as Lieutenant Valentine Baker, he was guilty several years ago in endeavoring to violate the person of a young lady, his fellow passenger in an English railway train. To this journalist we are indebted for the lesson that a man may retrieve a reputation lost in assaulting an unarmed women by engaging in conflict with armed men. His reinstatement in the Army and Navy Club, says the same writer, shows that English gentleman do not like to "kick a man when he's down." Indeed! But is it, then, characteristic of English gentlemen to prefer as companions men who outrage defenceless women? We would not depreciate any attempt to shield even Baker Pasha from vindictive ostracism, but, if we knew how many of his associates in the Army and Navy Club would be willing to accept a public introduction to the lady whom he assaulted, we should be in a better position to accurately judge the quality of their mercy.

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A German scientist has just invented a machine calculated to replace all our charming methods of applying the death penalty. This interesting invention and the manner of using it are described as follows: In the middle of a hall specially designed for the executions is erected a large allegorical statue of Justice, holding in one hand a sword and in the other a balance. In front of the statue is an arm-chair for the criminal. After pronouncing the sentence, the judge (the machine dispenses with the hangman) throws the baton of justice, which he has previously broken into two pieces, into one of the scales of the balance held by the statue; the scale falls and - human justice is satisfied. For the condemned dies, struck by lightning from a powerful electric battery placed within the statue and started into action by the fall of the scale. Is it the intention of advancing civilization to temper justice by science and arts rather than by mercy?

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The "Renssciaer County Gazette," published at Greenbush, N.Y., remarked the other day that "communism and nihilism embrace nothing but the recrement of the life-blood and the scoria of the industry of the countries they infest." After that we were not surprised to find the next column the following terse but superfluous editorial confession: "We haven't got much brains."

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Liberty lost one of her most cruel enemies by the death of M. Dufaure, the French senator, a few weeks ago, in his eighty-fourth year. As Rochefort wittily said when he died, "Buffon failed to tell us that crocodiles could live so long." Though professedly progressive, he persistently fought every progressive measure, and in 1871 made himself conspicuous by the bitterness of his pursuit of the Paris Communists. He initiated also, we believe, the measure suppressive of the great International Working People's Association. Rochefort's obituary of the deceased was entitled "One Less," and concluded with these words: "The idea of seeing suffering was the sole delight of this wild beast who never sought satisfaction except in the sorrow of another. To the four horses employed for the quartering of Damiens, he with pleasure would've added two. Has he died expressing regret at not having witnessed the tortures of Hessy Helfmann, we should have been but little surprised. He appears to have died of hunger, his stomach no longer being able to bear food. It was just the opposite with the exiles whom he sent to New Caledonia, and who died likewise, but because they had no food, not because they had no stomach." We echo the wish of Paul Leconte, another French journalist: "May Liberty never meet upon her path any more such 'Liberals' as he!"

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Has Boston at last found a successor to Theodore Parker? It really begins to look so. Not, however, in the hall that bears Parker's name, but next door, in the Paine Memorial Hall. There for six months now, every Sunday afternoon, has been heard by a steadily growing audience a discourse from George Chainey, the infidel preacher. Before us, by his courtesy, lies a beautiful volume of 132 pages containing the first eighteen of these discourses, which he published weekly in a pamphlet called "The Infidel Pulpit." Coming to Boston from the West full of enthusiasm for his work, he has imbued others with the same spirit, and has formed a society that is already a powerful and beneficent factor in the work of Liberalism. Each of these lectures shows vigor and breadth of intellect; each line of them breathes earnestness of purpose. They deserve to be read by all thinking people, who can order the volume and subscribe for subsequent issues by addressing Mr. Chainey at 51 Fort Avenue, Roxbury, Boston, Mass.

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That staid London journal, the "Daily News," was sadly upset by Hartmann's letter to the "New York Herald." It was actually forced to the conclusion that "it seems to be possible for an educated person to grow to man's estate on the continent of Europe without the slightest notion that carefully prepared murder, schemes which, if successful, must sacrifice the lives, not only of their objects, but of many other innocent people, are abhorrent to the vast majority of civilized men throughout the world." The "News" did not lose its head entirely, however, but retained sufficient of its equanimity to "not undertake to account by any single fact or any simple explanation for this strange phenomenon of modern life and society." This course speaks volumes for the editor's prudence.

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People taught to depend upon the reliance of authority lose their self-reliance. To reassure a populace excited and bewildered by news of Lincoln's assassination, Gen. Garfield could find no more effective words than those now famous: "God reigns and the government still lives." Once satisfied that they still had masters in both worlds, their security seemed complete. To derive security from oppression is indeed to "pluck the flower, safety, from the nettle, danger."

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The third annual convention of the Union Reform League will be held in the town hall at Princeton, Mass., on the last Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this month, and will be addressed by Stephen Pearl Andrews, Col. J. H. Blood, and numerous other speakers.

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We suspect that Mrs. E. D. Cheney has hit upon the origin of "Me Too." She writes in the "Free Religious Index:" "When Louis XIV said, "L'Etat, c'est moi," he obliged the sans-culottes of Paris to answer, "Et moi aussi.