we are not ashamed to practise; while our forefathers, under the sway
of a less fastidious but a more energetic principle of virtue, were
careless of words, and only considerate of actions.'

To this clever piece of special pleading we can only answer that the
fact is directly contrary; that there is a mass of unanimous evidence
which cannot be controverted to prove that England, in the first half
of the seventeenth century was far more immoral than in the
nineteenth; that the proofs lie patent to any dispassionate reader:
but that these pages will not be defiled by the details of them.

Let it be said that coarseness was 'the fashion of the age.' The
simple question is, was it a good fashion or a bad? It is said--with
little or no proof--that in simple states of society much manly
virtue and much female purity have often consisted with very broad
language and very coarse manners. But what of that? Drunkards may
very often be very honest and brave men. Does that make drunkenness
no sin? Or will honesty and courage prevent a man's being the worse
for hard drinking? If so, why have we given up coarseness of
language? And why has it been the better rather than the worse part
of the nation, the educated and religious rather than the ignorant
and wicked, who have given it up? Why? Simply because this nation,
and all other nations on the Continent, in proportion to their
morality, have found out that coarseness of language is, to say the
least, unfit and inexpedient; that if it be wrong to do certain
things, it is also, on the whole, right not to talk of them; that
even certain things which are right and blessed and holy lose their
sanctity by being dragged cynically to the light of day, instead of
being left in the mystery in which God has wisely shrouded them. On
the whole, one is inclined to suspect the defence of coarseness as