Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/147

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

her. Again, how significantly sublime is the story, in one of the Puranas, of girls remaining unclad while rishis robed in purity passed by them ! Mr. W. T. Stead, Editor of The Review of Reviews, so dead against every kind of oppression or compulsion, has had to pay a heavy price for the advancement of Purity in England, in connection with the passing of a Bill prohibiting an immoral traffic in girls under the age of twenty-one. For what he had written and done on that occasion he was, on a technical point of law, sentenced to three months' imprisonment. But his dauntless exertions overcame all opposition ; the conscience of the country was roused ; and the Bill, at first strongly opposed, was enthusiastically passed. Again, all honour be to Gladstone, who could tell Sir Charles Dilke himself that, inconsequence of his figuring in a divorce case, he could no longer be a member of the Cabinet! And accordingly, ever after, Sir Charles Dilke, once talked of as the coming Premier, had to hide "his dimi-