62 PROGRESS OF LEGISLATION FOR SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT. [1816. during an incessant conflict, in which the roughest weapons of controversy were freely used by speakers and by writers. The amount of acrimony and intolerance which we may trace in the periodical press of that time, now appears ludicrous to the few who have survived what Sydney Smith calls “an awful period for those who had the misfortune to entertain liberal opinions.' A later generation turns with loathing from the mode in which educated men denounced those who differed from them in the notion that the English constitution, as then understood, was the best possible form of government, and that what those who were sneered at as enthusiasts called social evils were really blessings in disguise. When the enthusiasts attempted to repeal or modify laws wholly unsuited to the advanced opinions of the age, and which appeared unlikely to provoke the hostility of mere selfish interests, there was always some formidable adversary to stand in the breach, ready to defend the crumbling outer walls of our time-honoured institutions, as if they constituted the strength and glory of the citadel. Wise men looked upon English life, and thought "'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature They were levellers-they were visionaries-they would make government impossible, said an overwhelming majority. A type of the class who resisted every approach to improvement was the Lord Chancellor Eldon. His thought by day, his dream by night, was to uphold what he called the Constitution— that indefinable compound of principles and expedients, that to him was as sacred as the commands of Holy Writ. Whoever approached to lay his hands on that ark, whether he came to blot out a cruel statute, or to mitigate a commercial restriction, or to disfranchise a corrupt borough, or to break down a religious disability, was his enemy. It has been truly observed, that he confounded every abuse that surrounded the throne, or grew up within the precincts of the altar, with the institutions themselves-" alike the determined enemy of all who would either invade the institution or extirpate the abuse." Romilly was the foremost amongst the courageous spirits who risked something for the amelioration of the lot of their fellow-men. His perseverance was an example to other earnest labourers, who, amidst much suspicion, and some ridicule, rested not till they had secured a neutral ground on which the benevolent and wise of each party might labour without any compromise of their political consistency. Criminal Laws; Police; Poor-Laws; Education; these offered themselves, when the excitement of the war had passed away, as subjects that might be dealt with in the same spirit which had finally carried the abolition of the Siave Trade. Tory might unite with Whig in measures whose necessity was proclaimed in many forms of misery, of oppression, of neglect. Resistance to change gradually became feebler and feebler. There was a wide gulf between the land of promise and the land of reality; but it was first bridged over with a single plank, and then a solid structure arose, across which the advocates of "things as they should be" securely passed to an enduring triumph, of which the wisest of the adherents of "things as they are" came, in the fulness of time, to share the honour. The name of reform in the Criminal Laws had not been heard in the House 1816.] CRIMINAL LAWS. 63 of Commons for fifty-eight years, when, in 1808, Romilly carried his Bill for the abolition of the punishment of death for privately stealing from the person to the value of five shillings; in other words, for picking pockets. His friend Scarlett advised him to attempt at once to repeal all the statutes which punish with death mere thefts unaccompanied by any act of violence, or other circumstance of aggravation; but Romilly, seeing that he had no chance of being able to carry through the House a Bill which was to expunge at once all those laws from the statute-book, determined to attempt the repeal of them one by one. Upon this prudential principle Romilly carried his first reform in 1808. Nevertheless, the House of Commons, which consented to pass the Bill, forced upon him the omission of its preamble:-" Whereas, the extreme severity of penal laws hath not been found effectual for the prevention of crimes; but, on the contrary, by increasing the difficulty of convicting offenders, in some cases affords them impunity, and in most cases renders their punishment extremely uncertain." The temper with which too many persons of rank and influence received any project of amelioration at the beginning of this century, is forcibly exhibited in an anecdote which Romilly has preserved for our edification. The brother of a peer of the realm, fresh from a debauch, came up to him at the bar of the House of Commons, and stammered out, "I am against your Bill; I am for hanging all."* In 1810 Romilly brought in three Bills to repeal the Acts which punished with death the crimes of stealing privately in a shop goods of the value of five shillings, and of stealing to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, or on board vessels in navigable rivers. The first Bill passed the House of Commons, but was lost in the Lords. The other two were rejected. In 1811 the rejected Bills were again introduced, with a fourth Bill, abolishing the capital punishment for stealing in bleaching-grounds. The four Bills were carried through the House of Commons; but only that on the subject of bleaching-grounds was sanctioned by the Lords. The constant argument that was employed on these occasions against the alteration of the law was this-that of late years the offences which they undertook to repress were greatly increased. Justly did Romilly say, "A better reason than this for altering the law could hardly be given." On the 24th of May, 1811, when three of the Bills were rejected in the House of Lords, lord Ellenborough declared, "They went to alter those laws which a century had proved to be necessary, and which were now to be overturned by speculation and modern philosophy."+ The Lord Chancellor, Eldon, on the same occasion stated, that he had himself early in life felt a disposition to examine the principles on which our criminal code was framed, "before observation and experience had matured his judgment. Since, however, he had learnt to listen to these great teachers in this important science, his ideas had greatly changed, and he saw the wisdom of the principles and practice by which our criminal code was regulated." In 1813 sir Samuel Romilly's Bill for the abolition of capital punishment in cases of shoplifting, was carried by the Commons in the new Parliament; but it was again rejected * Romilly's "Diary," June, 1808. Ibid., vol. xx. p. 300. 1 64 FORGERIES OF BANK NOTES. [1816. in the House of Lords. No further attempt was made towards the amelioration of this branch of our laws till the year 1816. On the 16th of February sir Samuel Romilly obtained leave to bring in a Bill repealing the Act of William the Third, which made it a capital offence to steal privately in a shop to the value of five shillings. He described this Act as the most severe and sanguinary in our statute-book. As recently as 1785, no less than ninety-seven persons were executed in London for this offence alone; and the dreadful spectacle was exhibited of twenty suffering at the same time. The capital sentence was now constantly evaded by juries committing a pious fraud, and finding the property of less value than was required by the statute. The consequence, if severe laws were never executed, was, that crime went on to increase, and the crimes of juvenile offenders especially. On moving the third reading of the Bill, on the 15th of March, sir Samuel Romilly called attention to the great number of persons of very tender age who had recently been sentenced to death for pilfering in shops. At that moment there was a child in Newgate, not ten years of age, under sentence of death for this offence; and the Recorder of London was reported to have declared that it was intended to enforce the laws strictly in future, to interpose some check, if possible, to the increase of youthful depravity. The Bill passed the Commons, but was thrown out in the Lords on the 22nd of May. On this occasion the Lord Chief Justice agreed with the Lord Chancellor, "that the effect of removing the penalty of death from other crimes had rendered him still more averse to any new experiment of this kind. Since the removal of the vague terror which hung over the crime of stealing from the person, the number of offences of that kind had alarmingly increased." * Thus, with the absolute certainty of experience that bloody laws rigorously administered did not diminish crime, the legislators of the beginning of the nineteenth century believed, or affected to believe, that the same laws scarcely ever carried into execution would operate through the influence of what they called "a vague terror." The inefficiency of this system is forcibly demonstrated by a comparison of the number of forged notes presented at the Bank of England, with the number of persons convicted of forging and uttering such notes, and the number of these executed for forgery. In 1816 there were 17,885 forged notes presented at the Bank of England; 104 persons were convicted of forgery; 18 were executed. The capital punishment for forgery was not abolished till 1833; but there was no execution for that offence after 1829. The crime had decreased by removing the temptation to its perpetration upon a large scale. In 1820 there were 29,035 forged notes presented at the Bank; the convictions were 352; the executions were 21. In 1823 the forged notes presented were 1648; the convictions were 6; the executions were 2. The resumption of cash payments had extinguished the notes for one pound and two pounds, which had previously constituted the chief circulating medium. In 1816 our system of police had arrived at its perfection of imbecile wickedness. The machinery for the prevention and detection of crime was exactly accommodated to the machinery for its punishment. On the 3rd of April, on the motion of Mr. Bennet, a Committee of the House of Commons * Hansard, vol. xxxiv. p. 684. 1816.] POLICE OF LONDON. 65 was appointed to inquire into the state of the police of the metropolis. The Committee was resumed in 1817; and two Reports were presented, which were among the first causes of the awakening of the public mind to a sense of the frightful evils which were existing in what we flattered ourselves to be the most civilized city in the world. There was no unity of action amongst the petty jurisdictions into which the metropolis was divided. The notion of a preventive police was utterly unknown. The "thief-taker," as the police officer was called, was the great encourager of crime. The suppression of crime would have taken away the chief profits of his occupation. Flashhouses, known in the scientific phraseology of the police as "flash-cribs," "shades," and "infernals," were filthy dens, where thieves and abandoned females were always to be found, riotous or drowsy, surrounded by children of all ages, qualifying for their degrees in the college of crime. "There," says a Middlesex magistrate, examined before the Committee of 1816, "they (the children) see thieves and thief-takers sitting and drinking together on terms of good-fellowship; all they see and hear is calculated to make them believe they may rob without fear of punishment, for in their thoughtless course they do not reflect that the forbearance of the officers will continue no longer than until they commit a forty-pound crime, when they will be sacrificed." A forty-pound crime!-the phraseology is as obsolete as if it were written in the pedlar's French of the rogues of the sixteenth century. A forty-pound crime was a crime for whose detection the State adjudged a reward, to be paid on conviction, of forty pounds; and, as a necessary consequence, the whole race of thieves were fostered into a steady advance from small offences to great, till they obligingly ventured upon some deed of more than common atrocity, which should bestow the blood-money upon the officers of the law who had so long petted and protected them. The system received a fatal blow in 1816, in the detection of three officers of the police, who had actually conspired to induce five men to commit a burglary, for the purpose of obtaining the rewards upon their conviction. The highwaymen who infested the suburbs of the metropolis had been eradicated—they belonged to another age. Offences against the person were very rarely connected with any offences against property. But the uncertainty of punishment, the authorized toleration of small offenders, and the organized system of negotiation for the return of stolen property, had filled the metropolis with legions of experienced depredators. The public exhibitions of the most profligate indecency and brutality can scarcely be believed by those who have grown up in a different state of society. When Defoe described his Colonel Jack, in the days of his boyish initiation into vice, sleeping with other children amidst the kilns and glasshouses of the London fields, we read of a state of things that has long passed away. But, as recently as 1816, in Covent Garden Market, and other places affording a partial shelter, hundreds of men and women, boys and girls, assembled together, and continued during the night, in a state of shameless profligacy, which is described as presenting a scene of vice and tumult more atrocious than anything exhibited even by the lazzaroni of Naples. The brilliantly lighted, carefully watched, safe, orderly, and tranquil London of the present day, presents as great a contrast to the London of 1816, as that again, contrasted with the London of 1762, the year in which VOL VIII. F 66 GAS-LIGHT-MENDICITY AND VAGRANCY. [1816. the Westminster Paving and Lighting Act was passed. Street robberies, before that period, were the ordinary events of the night. Security was the exception to the course of atrocity, for which the Government applied no remedy but to hang. For half a century after this the metropolis had its comparative safety of feeble oil-lamps and decrepit watchmen. The streets were filled with tumultuous vagabonds; and the drowsy guardians of the night suffered every abomination to go on in lawless vigour, happy if their sleep were undisturbed by the midnight row of the drunken rake. In 1807 Pall-Mall was lighted by gas. The persevering German who spent his own money and that of subscribers to his scheme, had no reward. The original gas company, whose example was to be followed, not only by all England but by the whole civilized world, was first derided, and then treated in Parliament as rapacious monopolists, intent upon the ruin of established industry. The adventurers in gas-light did more for the prevention of crime than the Government had done since the days of Alfred. We turn to the Parliamentary Debates, and we see how they were encouraged in 1816,-nine years after it had been found that the invention was of inappreciable public benefit. "The company," said the earl of Lauderdale, "aimed at a monopoly, which would ultimately prove injurious to the public, and ruin that most important branch of trade, our whale fisheries." Alderman Atkins " contended that the measure was calculated to ruin that hardy race of men, the persons employed in the Southern and Greenland whale fisheries, in each of which a million of money, and above a hundred ships, were engaged. If the Bill were to pass, it would throw out of employ ten thousand seamen, and above ten thousand rope-makers, sail-makers, mast-makers, &c., connected with that trade." Who can forbear to admire the inexhaustible fund of benevolence that for ages had been at work in the advocacy of the great principle of protection? A Committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1815 to inquire into the state of mendicity and vagrancy in the metropolis and its neighbourhood; and they continued their sittings in 1816; reporting minutes of the evidence in each year. Beyond these Reports no legislative measure was adopted. The evidence went rather to show the amount of imposture than of destitution. To collect such evidence was an amusing occupation for the idle mornings of Members of Parliament. To inquire into the causes of destitution and its remedies would have been a far heavier task. The chief tendency of the evidence was to show how the sturdy beggar was a capitalist and an epicure; ate fowls and beefsteaks for supper, and despised broken meat; had money in the funds, and left handsome legacies to his relations. The witnesses, moreover, had famous stories of a lame impostor who tied up his leg in a wooden frame, and a blind one who wrote letters in the evening for his unlettered brethren; of a widow who sat for ten years with twins who never grew bigger, and a wife who obtained clothes and money from eleven lying-in societies in the same year. But the Committee had also some glimpses of real wretchedness amidst these exciting tales of beggar-craft-as old as the days of the old Abraham. They heard of Calmel's Buildings, a small court of twenty-four men. |