NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I commend the whole of the following letter to the reader’s most serious consideration:—

Broxbourn, Herts, 11th June, 1874.

My dear Sir,—You are so tolerant of correspondents with grievances, that I venture to say a few more words, in reply to your note about Law Reform. In November next the Judicature Bill will come into operation. The preamble recites this incontestable fact, “that it is expedient to make provision for the better administration of justice in England.” Now, the two salient features of the incessant clamour for Law Reform are these—1st, an increased conviction of the sanctity of property; 2nd, a proportionate decrease in the estimate of human life. For years past the English people have spent incalculable money and talk in trying to induce Parliament to give them safe titles to their land, and sharp and instant means of getting in their debts: the Land Transfer Bill is in answer to this first demand, and the Judicature Bill to the second. Meanwhile the Criminal Code may shift for itself; and here we have, as the outcome of centuries of vulgar national flourish about Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and much else, the present infamous system of punishing crime by pecuniary penalties. Now the spirit of this evil system is simply this: “A crime is an offence against society. Making the [184]criminal suffer pain won’t materially benefit society, but making him suffer in his pocket will;” and so society elects to be battered about, and variously maltreated, on a sliding scale of charges, adjusted more on medical than moral principles. No doubt it is very desirable to have a title-deed to your thousand acres, no bigger than the palm of your hand, to be able to put it in a box, and sit upon it, and defy all the lawyers in the land to pick a flaw in your title; quite a millenium-like state of things, but liable to be somewhat marred if your next door neighbour may knock you off your box, stab you with a small pocket-knife, and jump on your stomach, all with grievous damage to you, but comparative immunity to himself. We are one day to have cheap law, meanwhile we have such cheap crime that injuries to the person are now within the reach of all. I may be a villain of the first water, if I have a few spare pounds in my pocket. From a careful survey of lately reported cases, I find I can run away with my neighbour’s wife, seduce his daughter, half poison his household with adulterated food, and finally stab him with a pocket-knife, for rather less than £1000. Stabbing is so ridiculously cheap that I can indulge in it for a trifling penalty of £1. (See Southall’s case.) But woe be to me if I dare to encroach on my neighbour’s land, prejudice his trade, or touch his pocket; then the law has remedies, vast and many, and I shall not only incur pecuniary penalties that are to all effects and purpose limitless, but I shall be made to suffer in person also. These two things are exactly indicative of the gradual decay of the national mind under the influence of two schools. The first teaches that man’s primary object in life is to “get on in the world;” hence we have this exaggerated estimate of the value and sanctity of property. The second school teaches that love can exist without reverence, mercy without justice, and liberty without obedience; and as the logical result of such teaching, we have lost all clear and healthy knowledge of what justice really is, and invent a system of punishments [185]which is not even really punitive, and without any element of retribution at all. Let us have instead a justice that not only condones the crime, but also makes a profit out of the criminal. And we get her; but note the irony of Fate: when our modern goddess does pluck up heart to be angry, she seems doomed to be angry in the wrong way, and with the wrong people. Here is a late instance (the printed report of which I send you):—

William Hawkes, a blind man and very infirm, was brought up, having been committed from Marlborough Street, to be dealt with as a rogue and vagabond.

On being placed in the dock,

Mr. Montagu Williams, as amicus curiæ, said he had known the prisoner for years, from seeing him sitting on Waterloo Bridge tracing his fingers over a book designed for the blind to read, and in no instance had he seen him beg from those who passed by, so that he was practically doing no harm, and some time ago the late Sir William Bodkin had dealt very mercifully with him. Something ought to be done for him.

Mr. Harris said he could corroborate all that his learned friend had stated.

The Assistant-Judge said he had been convicted by the magistrate, and was sent here to be sentenced as a rogue and vagabond, but the Court would not deal hardly with him.

Horsford, chief officer of the Mendicity Society, said the prisoner had been frequently convicted for begging.

The Assistant-Judge sentenced him to be imprisoned for four months.—May, 1874.

The other day I was reading a beautiful Eastern story of a certain blind man who sat by the wayside begging; clearly a very importunate and troublesome blind man, who would by no means hold his peace, but who, nevertheless, had his heart’s desire granted unto him at last. And yesterday I was also reading a very unlovely Western story of another blind man, who was “very infirm,” not at all importunate, did not even beg; only sat there by the roadside and read out of a certain Book that has [186]a great deal to say about justice and mercy. The sequel of the two stories varies considerably: in this latter one our civilized English Law clutches the old blind man by the throat, tells him he is a rogue and a vagabond, and flings him into prison for four months!

But our enlightened British Public is too busy clamouring for short deeds and cheap means of litigation, ever to give thought or time to mere “sentimental grievances.” Have you seen the strange comment on Carlyle’s letter of some months ago, in which he prophesied evil things to come, if England still persisted in doing her work “ill, swiftly, and mendaciously”? Our export trade, for the first five months of this year, shows a decrease of just eight millions! The newspapers note, with a horrified amazement, that the continental nations decline dealing any longer at the “old shop,” and fall back on home products, and try to explain it by reference to the Capital and Labour question. Carlyle foresaw Germany’s future, and told us plainly of it; he foresees England’s decadence, and warns us just as plainly of that; and the price we have already paid, in this year of grace 1874, for telling him to hold his tongue, is just eight millions.

Yours sincerely,

Next, or next but one, to the Fors for the squires, will come that for the lawyers. In the meantime, can any correspondent inform me, approximately, what the income and earnings of the legal profession are annually in England, and what sum is spent in collateral expenses for juries, witnesses, etc.? The ‘Times’ for May 18th of this year gives the following estimate of the cost of the Tichborne trial, which seems to me very moderate:—

The Trial of the Tichborne Claimant.—On Saturday a return to the House of Commons, obtained by Mr. W. H. Smith, was printed, showing the amount expended upon the prosecution in the [187]case of “Regina v. Castro, otherwise Orton, otherwise Tichborne,” and the probable amount still remaining to be paid out of the vote of Parliament for “this service.” The probable cost of the trial is stated at £55,315 17s. 1d., of which £49,815 17s. 1d. had been paid up to the 11th ult., and on the 11th of May inst. £5,500 remained unpaid. In 1872–3 counsels’ fees were £1,146 16s. 6d., and in 1873–4 counsels’ fees were £22,495 18s. 4d. The jury were paid £3,780, and the shorthand writers £3,493 3s. The other expenses were witnesses, agents, etc., and law stationers and printing. Of the sum to be paid, £4,000 is for the Australian and Chili witnesses.—Times, May 18th, 1874.

II. I reprint the following letter as it was originally published. I meant to have inquired into the facts a little farther, but have not had time.

21, Mincing Lane, London, E.C.,

19th March, 1874.

Dear Sirs,—On the 27th March, 1872, we directed your attention to this subject of Usury in a paper headed “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” We have since published our correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Cumming, and we take his silence as an acknowledgment of his inability to justify his teaching upon this subject. We have also publicly protested against the apathy of the Bishops and Clergy of the Established Church regarding this national sin. We now append an extract from the ‘Hampshire Independent’ of the 11th instant, which has been forwarded to us:—

“The Church of England in South Australia is in active competition with the money changers and those who sell doves. The Church Office, Leigh Street, Adelaide, advertises that ‘it is prepared to lend money at current rates—no commission or brokerage charged,’ which is really liberal on the part of the Church of England, and may serve to distinguish it as a [188]lender from the frequenters of the synagogues.7 It has been suggested that the Church Office should hang out the triple symbol of the Lombards, and that at the next examination of candidates for holy orders a few apposite questions might be asked, such as—‘State concisely the best method of obtaining the highest rate of interest for Church moneys. Demonstrate how a system of Church money-lending was approved by the founder of Christianity.’ ”

As such perverseness can only end in sudden and overwhelming calamity, we make no apology for again urging you to assist us in our endeavours to banish the accursed element at least from our own trade.

Your obedient servants,

J. C. Sillar and Co.

I put in large print—it would be almost worth capital letters—the following statement of the principle of interest as “necessary to the existence of money.” I suppose it is impossible to embody the modern view more distinctly:—

“Money, the representation and measure of value, has also the power to accumulate value by interest (italics not mine). This accumulative power is essential to the existence of money, for no one will exchange productive property for money that does not represent production. The laws making gold and silver a public tender impart to dead masses of metal, as it were, life and animation. [189]They give them powers which without legal enactment they could not possess, and which enable their owner to obtain for their use what other men must earn by their labour. One piece of gold receives a legal capability to earn for its owner, in a given time, another piece of gold as large as itself; or in other words, the legal power of money to accumulate by interest compels the borrower in a given period, according to the rate of interest, to mine and coin, or to procure by the sale of his labour or products, another lump of gold as large as the first, and give it, together with the first, to the lender.”—Kellogg on Labour and Capital, New York, 1849.

[191]

1 The passage continues thus, curiously enough,—for the parallel of the boat at sea is precisely that which I have given, in true explanation of social phenomena:—

“The notion that when one man becomes rich he makes others poor, will be found upon examination to depend upon the assumption that there is in the world a fixed quantity of wealth; that when one man appropriates to himself a large amount of it, he excludes all others from any benefit arising from it, and that at the same time he forces some one else to be content with less than he would otherwise have had. Society, in short, must be compared to a boat at sea, in which there is a certain quantity of fresh water, and a certain number of shipwrecked passengers. In that case, no doubt, the water drunk by one is of no use to [164]the rest, and if one drinks more, others must drink less, as the water itself is a fixed quantity. Moreover, no one man would be able to get more than a rateable share, except by superior force, or by some form of deceit, because the others would prevent him. The mere statement of this view ought to be a sufficient exposure of the fundamental error of the commonplaces which we are considering.” ↑

2 The reader might at first fancy that the economy was not “absolute,” but that the expenses of the traveller were simply borne by his host. Not so; the host only gave what he in his turn received, when he also travelled. Every man thus carried his home with him, and to travel, was merely to walk or ride from place to place, instead of round one’s own house. (See Saunders Fairford’s expostulation with Alan on the charges incurred at Noble House.) ↑

3 But what is to be done, then? Emigrate, of course; but under different laws from those of modern emigration. Don’t emigrate to China, poison Chinamen, and teach them to make steam engines, and then import Chinamen, to dig iron here. But see next Fors. ↑

4 The writings of our vulgar political economists, calling money only a “medium of exchange,” blind the foolish public conveniently to all the practical actions of the machinery of the currency. Money is not a medium of exchange, but a token of right. I have, suppose, at this moment, ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds. That signifies that, as compared with a man who has only ten pounds, I can claim possession of, call for, and do [174]what I like with a thousand, or two thousand, or three thousand times as much of the valuable things existing in the country. The peasant accordingly gives the squire a certain number of these tokens or counters, which give the possessor a right to claim so much corn or meat. The squire gives these tokens to the various persons in town, enumerated in the text, who then claim the corn and meat from the peasant, returning him the counters, which he calls “price,” and gives to the squire again next year. ↑

5 Of the industry of the Magistrate against crime, I say nothing; for it now scarcely exists, but to do evil. See first article in Correspondence, at end of letter. ↑

6 Compare, especially, Letter xxix., p. 11. ↑

7 It is possible that this lending office may have been organised as a method of charity, corresponding to the original Monte di Pieta, the modern clergymen having imagined, in consequence of the common error about interest, that they could improve the system of Venice by ignoring its main condition—the lending gratis,—and benefit themselves at the same time. ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.