The Terrible Scandals in “High Life.”

We are exceedingly glad that the horrible scandal which Reynolds’s Newspaper was the first to bring under the notice of the general public has at last come more prominently forward through the proceedings at Bow-’street Police-court. The police have been deliberately employed in attempting to hush up the whole matter. If they had displayed as much activity in their endeavours to discover the Whitechapel murderer, “Jack the Ripper,” in all probability he would now have met with his deserts. But in the latter case it was merely the lives of unfortunate women that were at stake, whilst in the former the reputations of several of the nobility and others moving in the highest spheres of society that were endangered. Hence Mr. Monro, the chief of the police, in all likelihood with the sanction and approval of Mr. Matthews, the Home Secretary, did his uttermost to keep the hideous doings at Cleveland-street from the knowledge of the public. Their efforts, which in the first place proved more or less successful, have, however, in the result turned out to be partially abortive. Had the police done their duty, and promptly arrested every person frequenting that horrible den, every right-minded man would have applauded the proceeding. But they adopted another and widely different course. They arrested and brought to trial those who in the main were the least guilty of the offenders. When they make a raid upon some obscure gaming-house the names of those arrested are duly published by the police, but in the Cleveland-street scandal the strictest secrecy was observed. Hence the error in reference to Lord Euston, who, however, admits that he visited the house in question, but with the intention of witnessing a display of naked women, and on being told that it was one of the other sex took his departure. We shall, of course, learn more about it when the trial comes on; and it is to be hoped the police will be compelled to disclose all they know, and the names of those who frequented and were captured at the dreadful den of vice and infamy.

Many years back something of the same sort took place, and possibly the police may point to it as a precedent for what they have now done. The Bishop of Clogher was arrested in the act of perpetrating what was then a capital crime, with a private soldier of the Guards. They were both arrested, but on learning the high position of the right reverend culprit, he was admitted to bail, and forthwith absconded abroad, and was no more heard of. What became of his accomplice we know not. The existence amongst us of a Sodomite institution is a matter of a far more serious nature than his lordship, judging by the way in which he gave his evidence, would seem to think. The most severe measures the law will admit of should be resorted to in order to stamp out practices of an unnatural and revolting shape too hideous even to be mention.