CHAPTER IX.
I have now shown the grave character of the question which we are discussing. I have stated the principles of Magna Charta which form the basis of our Constitution, and I have pointed out how these principles are violated by the Acts which we oppose; I have traced the pernicious consequences arising from this violation, politically as well as morally; and I have briefly indicated the means by which we may repair the breach which has been made.
A question which involves not only the principles of morality but the fundamental principles of our liberties, must be referred for its final decision to no meaner tribunal than that of the entire people. That people is the only tribunal competent to decide a question so vital as this, which affects every individual in the nation, and must colour the whole of the future internal policy of England. In retaining or rejecting these Acts we have now to determine whether our Constitution shall stand as it has stood hitherto, or whether it shall be changed. This question can only be determined by that power in whose hands the Constitution is ultimately vested. The determination of this momentous question will involve also the fate of all that legislation the tendency of which, during the last century, has been gradually to weaken the Constitution through the insidious rejection in a large number of cases of that great safeguard of our liberties, Jury Trial. Had not the way been paved for such arbitrary Acts as those which we oppose, by the innovations which our great constitutional lawyers have so deplored, it would have been impossible for Parliament to have escaped arousing the alarm of the people when it proposed this present wholesale breach of the great principles of English jurisprudence. But the present Acts have opened our eyes to the nature and tendency of those encroachments which have long been silently going on among us, and we now see it to be a strong argument against such encroachments that they should have culminated in such an invasion of our rights. Men will carelessly tolerate for a long time encroachments in cases of little moment, if these encroachments tend towards the ease and expedition of justice; but when they find that under colour of that ease or expedition, men prompted by selfishness and fear, have made a law which hands over a vast multitude of the people into the power of the lowest of the executive, the real worth of our country begins to appear, and rather than tolerate such an evil they will abolish that whole system, so far as it relates to criminal cases, if that system can successfully be pleaded as an excuse for such treachery on the part of our rulers.[100]
What tribunal then can decide so grave and important a national question as this, other than the nation itself? What therefore shall we think of a Government which, when the nation has pressed this question upon it, has shown itself so contemptuous of the great constitutional principle involved, as to profess to investigate the question by means of a tribunal of twenty-six men, a considerable proportion of whom rank among the actual framers or supporters of the Acts? Further, in what light must it appear to us when we learn that the investigation conducted by this tribunal is expressly to be made into the “operation and administration” of the Acts, and that it has no other specified object? Those who made such a limitation must surely either have been ignorant of, or determined to override, the constitutional objections which the nation itself has proclaimed more or less distinctly from the first; otherwise why was not the inquiry directed at least in part to that momentous question on which it must finally be decided?
A Royal Commission has been appointed to inquire into these Acts. What is the subject of their inquiry? Is it whether this law be consistent with the first principles of morality? No, for that, such a tribunal, not being the ultimate fount of truth, is incompetent; nor, since we have each of us direct access to the ultimate fount of truth, do we need its verdict on this point. Is it whether this law be consistent or not with the principles of the English Constitution? No, although into this question inquiry might well have been made by such a body, for there are constitutional lawyers amongst us who could not on inquiry have remained blind to the fact of this great violation of our rights. But such an inquiry apparently did not suit the Government; therefore, what do they inquire into? Merely into this question, How does this double violation of the constitution and of morality work?
Whatever, therefore, be the verdict of this Commission, it obviously cannot affect either of these vital questions, which must be tried by the whole nation; and the decision of this Commission, worthless if it be for extension, is equally worthless if it be for repeal, because these Acts, if repealed on that verdict, would then be repealed on the ground of their unsatisfactory operation. The evil principle would not only be left undisputed and unrebuked, but it would be practically admitted that our constitutional privileges may again be violated should the results of such violation be temporarily satisfactory. Therefore I unhesitatingly venture to assert, that if the verdict of this Royal Commission should be for repeal, it would be more hurtful to our national interests than if it should report for extension, because, as it must be evident, the Acts would then be repealed on the ground of their medical inoperativeness, or the difficulty of their administration, or for some reason short of their constitutional iniquity, and not—as they will be when repealed by the people—on the ground and by reason of their essential wickedness as violations of morality and constitutional liberty. Surely it was the guardian genius of our Constitution who so happily blinded the Government which passed this law, as to permit it to assign and limit the grounds of this inquiry, as it has done, and has thus led it to throw upon the people themselves the necessity and duty, not only of repealing these Acts, but of forcing Parliament to place on the Statute-book a lasting record of this bitter conflict, in the form of a Statute which shall bind our Legislature for all future ages to regard as sacred the constitutional rights of the people, and which shall make it impossible for it again thus to violate the Constitution.
The great restraining Statutes which exist in England have grown out of aggressions made by those in power; and were not some unusual aggressions periodically to call for the renewal of such restraints, our Constitution might slip out of our hands without our being aware of it. Such restraints as these are as necessary now as they were in ancient times; nor will the progress of civilisation or the diffusion of education ever preclude the necessity of such ever-renewed restraints. For no diffusion of the ideas of liberty, no universal admission and universal acceptance of the doctrine of personal freedom, no acuteness of perception of the necessity of political equality for the very existence of a State, can ever eradicate from the hearts of men those passions and instincts which have been, in all ages and in all countries, the cause of the destruction of liberty. For liberties are not undermined for the sake of undermining liberties. The Constitution is not attacked with the motive of destroying it; but in all ages and in all countries liberties have been undermined, and constitutions have been invaded, not for those ends directly, but for the immediate end of some private passion or some private lust which is inconsistent with public liberty, and which can only be gained by its overthrow.
Let me therefore press upon my readers to remember that when we have obtained the repeal of these obnoxious Statutes, our work is then only half done. Besides that negative action, a positive action is called for, and means have to be taken to prevent the recurrence of such an invasion and such a struggle. Unless this be done, we are not safe for more than a generation. When we who have fought this battle are laid in our graves, when at some future time those who succeed us may be less vigilant or more enduring than we, and when at the same time men in power may be actuated by the same ever-recurring instincts of passion and self-interest—instincts which are always at the root of the destruction of freedom,—then our liberties may be irretrievably lost, and we shall be to blame for it, unless we have at the present crisis, as our forefathers have done, placed on the records of Parliament a solemn and binding agreement between the people and its rulers, whereby each shall be strictly bound to conform to their respective obligations.
Guizot remarks, in speaking of the success of English revolutions:—“It is not enough that rights should be recognised and promises made, it is further necessary that these rights should be respected, and these promises fulfilled; the last article therefore of the Great Charter is especially intended to provide this guarantee. It is there said that the barons shall elect twenty-five by their own free choice, charged to exercise all vigilance that the provisions of the charter may never fail to be carried into effect. The powers of these twenty-five barons (a kind of vigilance committee) were unlimited.” If the king or his agents allowed themselves to violate the enactments of the charter in the very smallest particular, the barons were to denounce this abuse before the king, and demand that it should be instantly checked. If the king did not accede to their demand, the barons had the right, forty days after the summons had been issued by them, to prosecute the king, to deprive him of all his lands and castles, “the safety of his person, the queen and his children being respected,” until the abuse had been reformed to the satisfaction of the barons and of the whole nation.[101]
Any one who reads the History of England may judge for himself of the wisdom of these immortal restraining Statutes called the Petition of Rights and Bill of Rights, which were made necessary by the aggressions and illegal actions of subsequent monarchs. And in less terrible crises than those which called for these great confirmatory charters, it has been invariably the habit of the English people to claim, through Parliament, besides the redress of the wrong committed, some similar wholesome restraining Statute, elucidating and strengthening anew that particular part of the Constitution which may happen to have been imperilled, and securing that similar violations shall not, in future, be attempted with impunity. Among these may be reckoned the famous Habeas Corpus Act, and a multitude of others which it is needless here to recount.
It would be improper for me to conclude this Essay, in which I have pointed out the similarity of the present crises to others in past history, without calling the reader’s attention to one characteristic in which these Acts of Parliament stand pre-eminent in the history of our legislation. The tyrannical aggressions of those in power in former days were indeed always the fruit of lust in some form or other,—greed of gain, or personal influence, personal pleasure, jealousy, or revenge; yet the effect of those aggressions was not so directly as in the present case to make the people immoral. The immorality was at first at least confined to the aggressor. He assailed the liberties only of the subject, and in so doing struck, no doubt, more or less remotely, at the root of public virtue; but he did not proclaim a vicious moral code in the ears of the whole people. Now this last tyrannous aggression has sown broadcast the seeds of an immoral principle. This is a law which not only proceeds of evil, but immediately results in evil, by forcing a moral iniquity upon the people. It is pre-eminently an onslaught on morality, while it is an attack on the Constitution. Therefore in order to oppose this great twofold evil, we need, not only the revival of all our English patriotism, our love of freedom and of justice, but a deeper revival still, that of the soul and of the spirit. We need a renewal of faith in divine and eternal principles, a moral regeneration, a practical return to the simplicity of Christ.
Guizot, in speaking of the secret of the success of the English Revolution, says that in spite of the moral scepticism of the times “the mass of the people remained faithful to simple Christianity,—as much attached to their doctrines as to their liberties. The views of the citizen, of the freeholder, and even of the peasant, soared far above his actual condition. He was a Christian; in his family or among his friends he boldly studied the mysteries of Divine power; what earthly power, he asked, could be so high that he must abstain from considering it? In the Sacred Scriptures he read the laws of God; to render obedience to them he was forced to resist other laws; it therefore became necessary to him to ascertain where human legislation ought to terminate.” It is this alternative which, in a much more marked and naked form than ever before, our citizens, our freeholders, and our peasants are once more driven to contemplate face to face; and the question, “Shall we obey God or man?” is that which they are now called upon once more to answer.
The whole conduct of the resistance in which we are now engaged to this immoral and arbitrary law will depend upon the sincerity and depth of the religious principle of this country. A moral and spiritual conviction must be the heart and soul of our present movement. Already it is proved to be so, and will be more fully proved ere the struggle be ended. Already that revival of moral faith, the simultaneousness of which with the rapid advances of a materialistic creed rests upon the promise of God himself, is beginning to prove its force as the most potent agency for political reform. Already it is gathering into a compact company the grave, the virtuous, the religious throughout the land.
It would be unseasonable at the close of this Essay for me to approach that difficult question which must needs, at times, trouble the minds of thoughtful persons who try to read the tendencies of the age; I mean the subtle connection between democracy and despotism—the tendency of democratic nations to combine the idea of a strongly centralized, ubiquitous, and omnipotent government with that of the sovereignty of the people, a combination which, when fully realized, makes every man willing to put himself in leading-strings, because it is not a person, nor a class of persons, but the people at large that holds the end of his chain; but before closing these remarks I venture to address a word of caution to my readers among the working classes who are electors. There are persons of birth, of station, spoiled, it may be, by the long inheritance of privilege, who hate the Constitution because of the barriers which it places between themselves and the accomplishment from time to time of certain arbitrary designs, and because in general, in a noble degree, it is no “respecter of persons.” On the other hand, there are men—and among them are some who loudly profess to be the people’s friends—who _despise_ the Constitution, and who see without a regret the invasion of its fundamental principles,—principles which they affect to believe are obsolete. When, therefore, the time comes, once and again, for you to look around you to select men to represent you in Parliament, and when gentlemen come forward professing the Radical principles which the majority of you uphold, pause for a moment! for among these professors there are some such as those to whom I allude, who despise the Constitution. Myself a Liberal, and an admirer of republican[102] institutions, I venture to advise you to regard this class of political aspirants with extreme suspicion. Withhold from them your confidence until you have thoroughly sounded their principles. Those to whom I allude are for the most part young men, or men at least characterized by that immaturity of judgment which is not the exclusive attribute of youth. They talk loudly of a future Republic, while they are at heart, though it may be unconsciously so, the prophets and devotees of the despotism of the future—that despotism which may consist with democratical institutions, and which may prove to be the most terrible of all tyrannies. You will scarcely fail to detect this tendency in the conversation of these men, who sometimes possess more of University cultivation than knowledge of the Constitution of England or experience of life. You will hear them speak with approbation of the most sweeping and compulsory measures; you will find them betraying a contempt for individual freedom, and a readiness to sacrifice the rights of persons, however sacred, to the interests of the “sovereign people,” represented by an arbitrary, centralized, imperial government. Sheltered under the idea of the sovereignty of the people, they find it possible to foster many a project destructive of individual freedom. It is to be feared that when such persons come into positions of power they will carry out these tendencies into practice. Adopting all the institutions of a democratical community as their basis, thereby appealing to your sympathy and winning your confidence, they will (not wilfully perhaps, but through a natural love of domination, or from mere thoughtlessness and immaturity of mind)[103] contribute to reduce their republic of the future to that state of society described by De Tocqueville—a man who fully acquiesced in and sympathized with the republican development of his day, but saw its dangers. “The supreme power in such a democracy,” he says, “extends its arm over the whole community; it covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened and made weak; such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupifies a people; ... it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself.—I think,” he says elsewhere, “that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories.... I have been led to think that the nations of Christendom will perhaps eventually undergo some sort of oppression like that which hung over several of the nations of the ancient world.”[104] A Greek sage observed long ago that the strongest oligarchies are those which in themselves were democratical. The possibility of such a future despotism need not however be regarded with dread by a people long trained to freedom, and watchful for the interests of all. I believe that we may escape subjection to this despotism of the future, which is shadowed forth in the crude and anomalous theories of the politicians to whom I have alluded, by holding fast those very principles by the strength of which our people have been enabled so happily in times past to resist monarchical aggressions. The vital source for the nourishment of those principles is a deep conviction of the Divine government of the world, and of the worth of every soul created by God. “If,” says De Tocqueville, “amongst the opinions of a democratic people any of those pernicious theories exist which inculcate that all perishes with the body, let the men by whom such theories are professed be marked as the natural foes of such a people. The Materialists are offensive to me in many respects; I am disgusted at their arrogance. If their system could be of any utility to man, it would seem to be by giving him a modest opinion of himself. But these reasoners show that it is not so; and when they think they have said enough to establish that they are brutes, they show themselves as proud as if they had demonstrated that they are gods.”[105] We have lately seen this arrogant materialism culminate in a temper of mind well expressed by one of the writers in the organ of the fashionable London Clubs, where, treating of that large class of persons of various shades of character who are brought under the Contagious Diseases Acts, he says these women ought to be “treated as foul sewers are treated, as physical facts and not as moral agents.” Sewers have neither souls nor civil rights; by admitting into their political theory the idea that any class of human beings whatever may be reduced to the level of an inanimate nuisance for political purposes, these writers have demonstrated to us very clearly the intimate connection between a gross materialism and the most cruel and oppressive despotism. The men who speak thus, and who act in harmony with their utterances, do not believe that the beings of whom they speak have souls; to them any regenerating influence from a Divine source upon the spirit of man or woman is inconceivable. It is needless to indicate more particularly the natural and close alliance between this materialism and the coercive and oppressive policy which such materialists, though frequently professing radicalism, will readily adopt, merely transferring the power of the deprivation of civil and human rights from the hands of a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy into those of official experts who will be the elect of a fully enfranchised people, and therefore more dangerously confided in by the people. In order that we may avoid such a future despotism having its root deeply laid in a materialistic creed, we need—and a merciful God will grant it—for each individual, and for the nation at large, a fuller measure of that light of the conscience, and that life of the spirit which will enable us to discern with clearness and to tread with perseverance that path which leads to the goal whither the hopes of the human race are ever tending.
The following are the editions of some books consulted:—
De Tocqueville’s _Democracy in America_. Third edition. Saunders and Otley.
Blackstone’s Commentaries. Thirteenth edition, with Christian’s Notes.
De Lolme on the Constitution. Second edition. Wilkie and Robinson.
Creasy on the Constitution. Eighth edition. Bentley.
Guizot’s Causes of the Success of the English Revolution. Murray.
APPENDIX A.
De Tocqueville says on Jury Trial, “To look upon the jury as a mere judicial institution, is to confine our attention to a very narrow view of it; for however great its influence may be upon the decisions of the law courts, that influence is very subordinate to the powerful effects which it produces on the destinies of the community at large. The jury is above all a political institution, and it must be regarded in this light to be fully appreciated.
“The institution of the jury may be aristocratic or democratic, according to the class of society from which the jurors are selected; but it always preserves its republican character, inasmuch as it places the real direction of society in the hands of the governed, or of a portion of the governed, instead of leaving it under the authority of the Government.... The true sanction of political laws is to be found in penal legislation, and if that sanction be wanting, the law will sooner or later lose its cogency. He who punishes infractions of the law is the real master of society. Now, the institution of the jury raises the people itself, or at least a class of citizens, to the bench of judicial authority. The institution of the jury consequently invests the people, or that class of citizens, with the direction of society.... The jury serves to communicate the spirit of the judges to the minds of the citizens; and this spirit, with the habits which attend it, is the soundest preparation for free institutions.”[106] Thus, while in England we are gradually allowing the institution of the jury to fall into disuse, we are making the central executive the real master of society, and while we imagine we are advancing towards a more strongly republican character, we are in fact retrograding towards imperialism.
APPENDIX B.
In the Act passed 6th August 1861, “To consolidate and amend the statute law of England and Ireland relating to larceny and other similar offences,” 24 and 25 Victoria, chapter 96, there is, by clause 110, an appeal allowed in summary cases as follows:—
24 and 25 Vict. ch. 96, s. 110—“In all cases where the sum adjudged to be paid on any summary conviction shall exceed five pounds, or the imprisonment adjudged shall exceed one month, or the conviction shall take place before one justice only, any person who shall think himself aggrieved by any such conviction may appeal to the next Court of General or Quarter Sessions, which shall be holden not less than twelve days after the day of such conviction, for the county or place wherein the cause of complaint shall have arisen; provided that such person shall give to the complainant a notice in writing of such appeal, and of the cause and matter thereof, within three days after such conviction, and seven clear days at the least before such Sessions, and shall also either remain in custody until the Sessions, or shall enter into a recognizance with two sufficient sureties,” etc. etc.
This appeal clause is identical with that in 24 and 25 Vict. c. 97, and continually repeated in other Acts of Parliament, as, for instance, in the one against brawling in church, etc. etc. It will be seen therefore that the absence of a right to appeal from the conviction by the justice of the peace under the Contagious Diseases Acts is a peculiar harshness of these Acts, as contrasted with general criminal Acts.
It appears from the “Criminal Law Amendment Acts,” 24 and 25 Vict. c. 96, 97, and 100, that the largest fine that can be inflicted by a justice of the peace is £50, which large fine can apparently be inflicted only in one case, viz., that of wounding deer (see c. 96, s. 12). Generally the limiting fine is £20 or £5. The greatest punishment mentioned in these Acts, as assignable by a justice of the peace, is _six months’ imprisonment_. Now, under the Contagious Diseases Acts (clause 7, Act 1869) the woman can be imprisoned in hospital for _nine months_. (By clause 24, Act 1866, the period during which she could be thus imprisoned was limited to six months, but was extended to nine months by clause 7, Act 1869. This extension, in common with many other features, shows the insidious character of these Acts.)
In addition, therefore, to the fundamental and absolute points of difference mentioned in the text of this Essay, these Acts differ from all previous Criminal Acts—1st, In inflicting a longer imprisonment on summary conviction; and 2d, In not permitting the appeal allowed under other Criminal Acts.
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Footnote 1:
_English Constitution_, p. 2. (Eighth edition. Bentley.)
Footnote 2:
Speech of the Earl of Chatham on the exercise of the Judicature in matters of Election, 1763.
Footnote 3:
Lord Chatham’s Speeches.
Footnote 4:
_English Constitution_, p. 148.
Footnote 5:
_Middle Ages_, chap. ii. p. 324.
Footnote 6:
_Ibid._
Footnote 7:
_Ibid._
Footnote 8:
De Lolme on the Constitution, p. 28.
Footnote 9:
Coke on Magna Charta.
Footnote 10:
_English Constitution_, p. 150.
Footnote 11:
_English Constitution_, p. 151.
Footnote 12:
Mittermaier.
Footnote 13:
Montesquieu, _Esprit des Lois_, xii. 2.
Footnote 14:
_Civil Liberty and Self-Government_, p. 54.
Footnote 15:
_English Constitution_, p. 382.
Footnote 16:
_History of his Own Times._
Footnote 17:
Sir Charles Trevelyan, in _Good Words_ of January 1, 1871, says—“It is well that the ladies of England have protested against their sex being recognised by Parliament as a _corpus vile_ for the indulgence of irregular lust. If it were possible for them to explain the real extent of the outrage upon womanhood, there would be one universal cry for repeal throughout the land.”
Footnote 18:
De Lolme on the Constitution, p. 354.
Footnote 19:
See Coke, p. 50, on Magna Charta. He says, “Nisi per legem terræ,” but by the law of the land. For the true sense and exposition of these words see the Statute of 37 Edward III. cap. 8, where the words ‘but by the law of the land’ are rendered ‘without due process of law;’ for there it is said, though it be contained in the great charter that no man is to be taken, imprisoned, or put out of his freehold without process of law, that is, without indictment or presentment of good and lawful men, where such deeds be done in due manner, or by writ original of common law, etc. In 28 Edward III. ch. 3, the words are rendered “without being brought in to answer but by due process of the common law.”
Footnote 20:
Coke’s _Institutes_, p. 50.
Footnote 21:
From this we may expect, following out the Contagious Diseases Acts, that a new office under Government will be created analogous to the Bureau de Mœurs in Paris, and that we shall ere long have a Secretary of State for the regulation of vice.
Footnote 22:
“Touching the business of martial law, these things are to be observed, viz.—_First_, that in truth and reality it is not a law, but something indulged rather than allowed as a law. The necessity of government, order, and discipline in an army, is that only which can give those laws a continuance: ‘quod enim necessitas cogit defendit.’ _Secondly_, This indulged law was only to extend to members of the army, and never was so much indulged as intended to be executed or exercised upon others. For others who are not listed under the army had no colour or reason to be bound by military constitutions applicable only to the army, whereof they were not parts. But they were to be ordered and governed only according to the laws to which they were subject.”—Hale’s _Common Law of England_, vol. i. p. 54.
“The Admiralty Court is not bottomed or founded upon the authority of the civil law, but hath its power and jurisdiction in such matters as are proper for its cognizance. The Court of Admiralty has no jurisdiction of matters or contracts done or made on land; and the true reason for their jurisdiction in matters done at sea is because no jury can come from thence.”—_Ibid._ p. 51.
Footnote 23:
Under Act 1866 the police are defined to mean “Metropolitan police, or other police or constabulary authorized to act in any part of any place to which this Act applies.”
Act 1868 was especially passed for the sole reason of substituting in Ireland “any policeman duly authorized,” instead of “the superintendent of police.”
Footnote 24:
20. If in any such examination the woman examined is found to be affected with a contagious disease, she shall thereupon be liable to be detained in a certified hospital, subject and according to the provisions of this Act, and the visiting surgeon shall sign a certificate to the effect that she is affected with a contagious disease, naming the certified hospital in which she is to be placed, and he shall sign that certificate in triplicate, and shall cause one of the originals to be delivered to the woman, and the others to the superintendent of police.
21. Any woman to whom any such certificate of the visiting surgeon relates may, if she thinks fit, proceed to the certified hospital named in that certificate, and place herself there for medical treatment; but if, after the certificate is delivered to her, she neglects or refuses to do so, the superintendent of police, or a constable acting under his orders, shall apprehend her and convey her with all practicable speed to that hospital, and place her there for medical treatment, and the certificate of the visiting surgeon shall be sufficient authority to him for so doing.
22. Where a woman certified by the visiting surgeon to be affected with a contagious disease places herself, or is placed as aforesaid, in a certified hospital for medical treatment, she shall be detained there for that purpose by the chief medical officer of the hospital until discharged by him by writing under his hand.
The certificate of the visiting surgeon, one of the three originals whereof shall be delivered by the superintendent of police to the chief medical officer, shall, when so delivered, notwithstanding that she is for that purpose removed out of one into or through another jurisdiction, or is detained in a jurisdiction other than that in which the certificate of the visiting surgeon was made, shall be sufficient authority for such detention.
26. Every woman conveyed or transferred under this Act to a certified hospital, shall, while being so conveyed or transferred thither, and also while detained there, be deemed to be legally in the custody of the person conveying, transferring, or detaining her.
Footnote 25:
_De laudibus legum Angliæ_, p. 53.
Footnote 26:
Blackstone, Bk. iii. p. 38.
Footnote 27:
The Act upon this point was very clearly defined by Mr. Bennett, an eminent solicitor, in a case tried at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, Plymouth, which entirely turned on the fact that _suspicion_ alone in the policeman’s mind justified his action, and that, further, he was not bound, when called on, to give the reasons of this suspicion.
Footnote 28:
Blackstone, Book iii.
Footnote 29:
M. Le Cour says that in Paris false accusations, by anonymous letters and otherwise, amount to several hundreds a week.
In the case at Plymouth already alluded to, Inspector Annis of Plymouth being asked by Mr. Rooker, a magistrate, “Have you ever got anonymous letters accusing women?” replied, “We get lots of them.”
Footnote 30:
On the occasion of the trial of a young girl under these Acts in a certain town of Kent, a full bench of magistrates was assembled. She was condemned to a month’s imprisonment, and on leaving the court remarked, “I did find it rather hard that the gentleman on the bench who gave the casting vote for my imprisonment had paid me five shillings the day before to go with him!”
Footnote 31:
Creasy’s _Constitution_, pp. 225 and 227.
Footnote 32:
De Lolme, p. 171.
Footnote 33:
Blackstone, Book iii. p. 378.
Footnote 34:
Blackstone, Book iii. p. 379.
Footnote 35:
See Appendix A, p. 179.
Footnote 36:
Lieber in his work on Civil Liberty remarks that lawyers have rarely been the promoters of reform in the laws: he excepts “the immortal Sir Samuel Romilly” and a few others.
Footnote 37:
It is thus worded in the Charter of Henry III.
Footnote 38:
_English Constitution_, p. 204.
Footnote 39:
Blackstone, vol. i. p. 145.
Footnote 40:
Blackstone, Book iv. chap. 20.
Footnote 41:
Professor Sheldom Amos writes on this subject:—“The proceedings contemplated by the Contagious Diseases Acts have been placed among a large and rapidly growing class of proceedings only technically criminal, and instituted for quasi-moral, sanitary, fiscal, or general police purposes. To this class belong cab-regulations, regulations in respect of the cattle-plague, regulations for preventing nuisances in the way of obstructions in the street or on the pavement, regulations in the way of railway bye-laws for securing the safety of passengers, etc. The actions endeavoured to be prevented by the class of laws here involved are not crimes in the sense of being in themselves morally reprehensible, still less abominable, but they are crimes so far as they are absolutely forbidden by the State, and the punishment and prevention of them is undertaken by the State through its own officers. This class of Acts has been very much multiplied of late years, and the proceedings with respect to them are always in the first instance before one or two magistrates. Some of the proceedings are ‘summary;’ that is, the magistrate can assign the punishment at once without appeal; others are summary only in the sense that the magistrate can, if the accused consent, assign the punishment at once, but the case can be reserved for Quarter Sessions and for jury trial in the event of the accused being able to find securities for his appearance. Thus, you see that the claim to jury trial is already practically obsolete for all offences not of such kind as theft, robbery from the person, murder, assaults, treason, forgery, and such like atrocious forms of wrong-doing. The proceedings under the Contagious Diseases Acts are placed among the first of the classes above described, that is, summary proceedings without appeal. I think with you that the extension and multiplication of such Acts and proceedings is a grave constitutional peril, as I have said elsewhere.” Let the reader compare the grave cases tried under the Contagious Diseases Acts with the quasi-moral, sanitary, and fiscal cases adverted to above, and let him mark the conclusions to which the framers of these Acts are inevitably driven through having placed these cases on this category. On the one hand, if, as some of our opponents say, these Acts are directed against vice, and are for the discouragement of the sin of prostitution, then, as we have seen, their framers are guilty of a violation of the constitution by placing cases of real criminality, involving severe penalties, on the list of summary proceedings in which there is no appeal. But if, as by far the greater number of our opponents affirm, these Acts do not treat prostitution as criminal, and these cases properly belong to the category above cited, then to what an awful moral conclusion are they driven on the other hand! To exact an exorbitant fare or to drive recklessly in the streets is a legal offence in a cabman; but to take a fare within prescribed limits and to drive in the streets is no moral offence at all. The same kind of argument holds true of all the technical offences created by the Acts of Parliament above alluded to. It is the exceeding of a certain limit (thereby causing inconvenience to society) which constitutes the legal offence under these economic regulations. But in the Contagious Diseases Acts the case is wholly different. Prostitution itself is morally criminal. The State—placing the Contagious Diseases Acts on the category of merely economical regulations—makes the crime dealt with under them to consist in acting as a prostitute _when out of health_. It says to the trader in sin, “You are guilty, unless you pursue this trade under certain conditions prescribed by Act of Parliament,” thus plainly implying, “You are not guilty so long as you ply your trade in compliance with the conditions imposed by our Act,”—hence the fearfully immoral influence of such a law upon the people at large! Whatever may be said, on the ground of expediency, against certain recent Acts of Parliament, it can never be said that their influence is _directly_ immoral, for the technical definition by the State of the crime treated in these cases does not involve the recognition of the lawful and innocent character of actions in themselves vicious, condemned by God’s Word, and ruinous to society; finally, it is clear that little or no injury to character is incurred by a false accusation under these economical Acts, whereas a false accusation under the Contagious Diseases Acts is ruinous.
Footnote 42:
The practical working of this Act turns upon the voluntary submission. The clauses which refer to this are as follows:—
Act 1866, clause 17.— “Any woman, in any place to which this Act applies, may voluntarily, by a submission in writing, signed by her in the presence of, and attested by, the superintendent of police, subject herself to a periodical medical examination under this Act for any period not exceeding one year.”
Act 1869, clause 6.—“Where any woman in pursuance of the principal Act (1866) voluntarily subjects herself by submission in writing to a periodical medical examination under that Act, such submission shall, for all the purposes of the Contagious Diseases Acts 1866 to 1869, have the same effect as an order of a justice subjecting the woman to examination, and all the provisions of the principal Act respecting the attendance of the woman for examination, and her absenting herself to avoid examination, and her refusing or wilfully neglecting to submit herself for examination, and the force of the order subjecting her to examination after imprisonment for such absence, refusal, or neglect shall apply and be construed accordingly.” If a woman do not desire to sign the voluntary submission, the process under the Acts is that in conformity with the clause 4, Act 1869, already cited, she shall be summoned before a justice, by whom the question as to her being a prostitute or not is first to be tried, and then if he is satisfied that she is such, she is ordered for examination. It is not until after this process of law, and until she has absented herself wilfully from the examination thus ordered, that there are any penal consequences. (See clause 28, Act 1866, quoted below.) The arbitrary character of the offices to which the carrying out of these Acts is intrusted is to be seen from the orders given by the War Office to the policeman, with respect to the voluntary submission, one of which orders is as follows:—“_Should any woman object to sign, she is to be informed of the penal consequences attending such refusal_, and the advantages of a voluntary submission are to be pointed out to her.” _Now, there are no penal consequences legally attending such a refusal_; on the contrary, _penal consequences attend signing_: and the War Office here utterly ignores all the process of law which intervenes between the accusation of the woman, under clause 16, Act 1869, and the penal consequences which, according to clause 28, Act 1866, may under certain circumstances ensue. Perhaps nothing could be such a striking comment as this on the utterly flimsy character of the whole process of law to which the woman is subjected. The War Office has here leapt at once from the suspicion of a policeman to the woman’s condemnation, as if the suspicion of a policeman alone were sufficient proof of her being a prostitute. Indeed, under the Act it seems fundamentally to be assumed that policemen are infallible judges as to whether a woman is chaste or not.
Footnote 43:
The form of the voluntary submission is as follows:—“I —— voluntarily subject myself to a periodical medical examination by the visiting surgeon for —— calendar months.” In order to put it more plainly before the reader, let him imagine some petty misdemeanour, such as petty theft or disorderly conduct,—let him imagine a paper of a self-criminating character put before the accused, wherein he signs words to this effect: “I —— submit myself to (here mentioning some new form of punishment, which shall include the public registration of his calling as a thief or a drunkard) for —— calendar months.” Where is here the desirable expediting of justice? and where is here the “benevolent motive of setting the culprit, after a brief punishment, free to start a new life”?
Footnote 44:
When the gross nature of the outrage involved in the examination becomes known to them, many refuse to sign the voluntary submission a second time, and have to be taken before a magistrate.
Footnote 45:
See Chapter v.
Footnote 46:
Not only is the case treated summarily under the Contagious Diseases Acts, and thus the safeguard of jury trial taken away, but even the safeguards which are generally allowed in summary cases are taken away. In other summary cases, where the imprisonment adjudged shall exceed one month, there is the right of appeal to the general or quarter sessions (see Appendix). But even this appeal is not allowed under the Contagious Diseases Acts, although (see clause 7, Act 1869, and clause 26, Act 1866) the woman may be imprisoned for nine months, and (see clause 28, Act 1866) may be imprisoned for three months with hard labour.
Footnote 47:
Blackstone, Book iii. p. 367.
Footnote 48:
If the reader will in the following speech substitute the words “Contagious Disease” for “Smuggling,” and make several consequent alterations, he will find that this address stands as that of a man rising from the dead to plead on our behalf.
Footnote 49:
Compare with this, clause 4, Act 1869, where information is to be lodged against a woman of whom the policeman has “good cause to believe” that she has been “outside of those limits _for the purpose_ of prostitution.” The reader will observe that the policeman here has not suspicion necessarily of any act perpetrated, but merely he has suspicion that this woman harbours in her breast a certain intention.
Footnote 50:
If Lord Hardwicke could use this language in respect to the danger which every honest man was subjected by a law directed against smugglers only, how much more are we justified in saying that every woman encounters dangers of as grave a kind by the existence of a law directed against unchaste women?
Footnote 51:
Only _one_ witness is required under the Contagious Diseases Acts.
Footnote 52:
How easily an innocent action may be misconstrued under the Contagious Diseases Acts may be seen by the evidence of Mr. Parsons, an examining surgeon under these Acts, who when examined by the Parliamentary Committee as to his definition of a prostitute (there being none under the Acts), defined it as “any woman whom there is fair and reasonable grounds to suspect to be _going_ to places which are the resort of prostitutes, and at times when immoral persons are out,” and added, “It is a matter of _mannerism_ more than anything else.”
Footnote 53:
The only witness required under the Contagious Diseases Acts is the paid spy.
Footnote 54:
A woman may be detained for nine months at a time in hospital, on evidence given by the hospital surgeon only (see clause 22, Act 1866, and clause 7, Act 1869); and the hospital authorities, whose servant he is, receive £30 a year for every bed which is filled.
Footnote 55:
If the difficulty of proving innocence in this case be so great, we may consider the difficulty much greater for a woman to prove, not only that she had no intention of an evil nature, but that she is in fact a chaste woman. It has been said that it is impossible even for Diana herself to prove her own chastity.
Footnote 56:
In a recent pamphlet, one of the supporters of the Contagious Diseases Acts says of the women, “No _crime_ is laid to their charge!” See Lane’s answer to Duncan M‘Laren.
Footnote 57:
This is precisely what we say of the Acts which we oppose.
Footnote 58:
The malicious whisper of a single man, under the Contagious Diseases Acts, may destroy the character of a woman. A gentleman who lately visited Paris was sitting in the boulevards with a young Frenchman, who, observing a great many young women passing, remarked to his English companion, “I could have any one of these sent to prison to-morrow by a single word to the inspector of police.”
Footnote 59:
Let the reader compare this with the description of the state of Paris given by M. Le Cour himself, the Prefect of the Police Médicale. There is a staff of special police appointed for the “surveillance” of the public women. It is a post which is despised by the more respectable men who take the office of regular police. These women-hunters or “Mouchards” are intrusted with large and arbitrary powers for hunting down and imprisoning these women. What is the effect? Is prostitution thereby restrained? I quote Le Cour’s own words (_Prostitution in London and Paris_, 1789–1870, by M. Le Cour):—“These public women are everywhere, in the drinking shops, the music saloons, the theatres, the balls; they haunt the public establishments, the railway stations and carriages, they push respectable women off the pavement, they roll in carriages, they frequent the Bois de Boulogne, they plant themselves outside every coffee-house, they drive slowly along the footpaths, there is a place by the lady’s side which she seems to offer to the passer-by; there are hotels which freely open their doors to them at any hour if they do not come alone.” As with the French smugglers spoken of by Lord Hardwicke, the rigour under which they lived gave rise to an _esprit de corps_ which enabled them to brave the authorities, so do the most vicious persons in Paris band themselves together as a compact community to defy authority. To quote Le Cour again: “Panderers are numerous at Paris, where they find more than anywhere else in the world the opportunity of practising their manœuvres and escaping the attention of the authorities. They keep registrary offices and restaurants, they sell articles for the toilet, millinery, gloves, or perfumes, and they constitute true snares for all young girls who are engaged as workwomen and employées.” Mme. Daubie also says in her book, _La Femme Pauvre_, that panderers and procurers band themselves together in such a compact _corps d’élite_ that they are able to engage the best houses in the city on the best terms, and to oppose any measures adopted by the authorities which may seem to be unfavourable to their abominable traffic.
Footnote 60:
Compare this with the _Saturday Review_ and _Pall Mall Gazette_ remarks about “shrieking sisterhoods.”
Footnote 61:
_Parliamentary History_, vol. ix. p. 1253.
Footnote 62:
It had been urged that the customs could not be collected unless the Bill against smugglers was passed.
Footnote 63:
It would seem that Parliament is not now independent of the permanent Officers of State, as, for instance, the authorities at the Horse Guards.
Footnote 64:
Compare this with what Blackstone says when speaking of the operations of just law being necessarily slow; that arises, says he, from “liberty, property, civility, commerce, and an extent of populous territory, which whenever we are willing to exchange for tyranny, poverty, barbarism, idleness, and a barren desert, we may then enjoy the same despatch of causes as is so highly extolled in some foreign countries.”
Footnote 65:
The pretence of the Contagious Diseases Acts may be reckoned as the lowest possible pretence, for it is that of attempting to preserve a man from the bodily inconveniences attending vicious habits, which by his own will he could avoid.
Footnote 66:
Speech delivered by Lord Chatham on the 20th November 1777.
Footnote 67:
If they had adopted the former definition without reserving this power of arbitrary omission, this law would have told too heavily upon the great; but even supposing that virtue might have continued to wink even under this law, still oblivious to them, and might have continued, as doubtless it would, to regard that as pardonable frailty in high life which is called prostitution among the humbler classes, yet there are others who, under this law, might have been too conveniently assailed; for policemen, examining surgeons, nay even sometimes justices of the peace, may not be unacquainted with temporary connections with that mistress, their appreciation of whose faithfulness makes them dread for her the severity of such a definition.
Footnote 68:
This appearance before the justice is only in case of disobedience to the Acts. In the first and all-important process of determining whether the woman be moral or vicious, not 10 per cent. of the women ever see the face of their judge, who condemns them on the hearsay evidence of the spy alone!
Footnote 69:
So anxious has our Legislature ever been to establish mercy even to convicted offenders, as a fundamental principle of government, that they made it an express article of that great public compact framed at the era of the Revolution—the Bill of Rights—that “no cruel and _unusual_ punishments” should ever be enforced (see Bill of Rights, art. x.). They even added a clause for that purpose to the oath which kings and queens were thenceforward to take at their coronation, thus endeavouring to render it an everlasting obligation to English monarchs to make justice “to be executed with mercy.” In the same spirit they availed themselves, not only of the crisis of the Revolution, but of every important occasion, to procure new confirmations to be given to the right of trial by jury, and in general to the purity and integrity of our system of criminal jurisprudence. A curious debate took place in Parliament in 1605 (see Parliamentary Hist., vol. v.) on a proposal to introduce some unusual form of punishment for certain criminals. The motion was very speedily rejected. I find in some ancient books on law, that even in the execution of the “peines fortes et dures,” regard was to be had to _decency_. A harrowing narrative of bodily pains, inflicted in order to urge the victim to confession, ends with the injunction to stop short of personal indecency towards him or her; this last agony was seldom inflicted, and only under the most oppressive tyranny, and by a cruel and shameless executive. It is impossible to dwell further on this subject; nor can one read such records without a burning shame on account of the degeneracy in this particular of our own times. It will be a sad day for Her Majesty when she wakes up to the full knowledge of the fact that she—a woman, a gracious and virtuous woman—has signed away with her own hand the liberties of a vast multitude of her subjects in a more complete fashion than has been attempted since the days of the Stuarts, and that she has unwittingly sanctioned deeds which make the heart of womanhood to freeze with horror.
Footnote 70:
Trial of John Wilkes, A.D. 1763.
Footnote 71:
Lieber, vol. i. p. 56.
Footnote 72:
“Trial itself,” says Lieber (vol. i. p. 182), “though followed by acquittal, is a hardship.” It is a peculiar hardship in the case of an accusation against a woman’s honour, which, even where satisfactorily disproved, generally imposes a greater or less social stigma on the person falsely accused. Yet this disproval is all but impossible.
Footnote 73:
The imprisonment inflicted under clause 28, Act 1864, falls upon those women who have any spark of modesty or virtue left, and may drive it out of them.
Footnote 74:
Compare this with the indiscriminate herding together of the women under the Acts in the examining-house.
Footnote 75:
Poor women in the subjected districts have said to me: “_Pretty_ girls get off far more easily than plain ones.”
Footnote 76:
_English Constitution_, p. 372.
Footnote 77:
_Ibid._ p. 374.
Footnote 78:
_Commentaries_, p. 373.
Footnote 79:
See Dr. Lyon Playfair’s speech in the House. See also Lane’s pamphlet, p. 15. See also the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, from which we make the following extract:—
“116. _Question_—Do you know of your own knowledge whether it is not the case that attempts to reform these women by approaching them with direct moral and religious advice, while they are pursuing their avocation, are generally unsuccessful? _Answer_—It is almost always inoperative.
“117. I suppose it has been attempted at Devonport by clergymen and others?—Very constantly.”
The effrontery of this statement is almost unparalleled when we consider the glorious but hitherto unappreciated achievements of the various Rescue Societies.
Footnote 80:
Lane’s answer to Duncan M‘Laren.
Footnote 81:
Preface to the _Areopagitica_.
Footnote 82:
“Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.”—Burke’s _Works_, p. 140.
Footnote 83:
With these considerations in their mind, I can conceive how safe and comfortable the fathers of the Contagious Diseases Acts felt themselves—no visions of a future possible repeal of this Act to trouble them!
Footnote 84:
“I am very much afraid,” says a member of Parliament in a recent letter, “that one cause of our weakness in fighting this battle in the House is, that there are too many of its members who secretly like these Acts, as making, as they think, their own immoralities less personally dangerous to them; there are many most excellent men on both sides, but I am afraid there are also many on whom wealth and station have had an injurious effect, who spend their lives merely for pleasure, and care nothing for higher considerations. This may seem strong language, but it is, I fear, too true.”
Footnote 85:
_English Constitution._
Footnote 86:
De Lolme.
Footnote 87:
Rousseau’s _Social Contract_, chap. viii.
Footnote 88:
“Such arbitrary courses have an ill operation upon the courage of a nation, by embasing the hearts of the people. A servile condition does, for the most part, beget in men a slavish temper and disposition. Those that live so much under the whip and the pillory, and such servile engines as were frequently used by the Earl of Strafford, they may have the dregs of valour, sullenness, and stubbornness which may make them prone to mutinies and discontents. Shall it be treason to embase the king’s coin, though but a piece of twelve pence, or six pence? and must it not needs be the effect of a greater treason to embase the spirits of his subjects, and to set a stamp and character of servitude upon them whereby they shall be disabled to do anything for the service of the king and commonwealth?”—Pym’s Speech on the Trial of the Earl of Strafford.
Footnote 89:
In a letter to the _Lancet_, a gentleman signing himself Stanley Haynes, M.D., suggests that the Government should erect vast establishments, to which “all persons ill with scarlatina, measles, roseola, variola, varicella, relapsing fever, typhus, enteric, or yellow fevers, diphtheria, pertussis, or cholera,” should be conveyed in spite of any remonstrances or resistance to the contrary; such establishments to be for all classes, and the removal of the patients to be insisted on, “whenever the medical officer of health is satisfied that isolation and disinfection will not be complete at home,”—even in this latter case the sick-rooms at home to be entered only by persons authorized by an officer of health. The writer says that this system “would be equal to the beneficial extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts to eruptive, continued, and mucous fevers.” He suggests that “much opposition would undoubtedly be roused by parents and others,” but that may be in time overcome, as the opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts is to be overcome, by custom, and education to the system. This scheme, which reads like a grim parody of the Contagious Diseases Acts, is indorsed by the _Lancet_, which speaks of the “importance” of Dr. Haynes’s letter.
In recent numbers of the _Lancet_ there has been a correspondence on the desirableness, from the doctor’s point of view, of making it compulsory on all women of the humbler classes, on pain of fine or imprisonment, to be attended in childbearing by a male practitioner. One of the correspondents says there is such a provision in the new “Medical Bill,” but on looking through that Bill I cannot find such a provision, unless indeed it be artfully concealed in clause 29. The _Lancet_, it is well known, is ever the friend of compulsion and violent centralization, abounding in such expressions as the following:—“It is to be regretted that a well instructed and humane government does not exercise a firmer influence over the anarchy, the greed, the ignorance of local governing bodies. But the energetic use of the powers given by the Sanitary Acts would enable medical men to confer benefits on the public, the value of which defies estimation.”—_Lancet._ These benefits conferred by medical men, be it observed, are to be purchased at the expense of that power of self-government, disposition to help the law, and manly independence which, as we have seen, De Tocqueville, Montalembert, Niebuhr, Guizot, and a host of thoughtful English writers, have attributed to a great extent to the freedom of local governing bodies. It might be asked further, is there no danger of anarchy, of greed, of ignorance among medical men?
Footnote 90:
_Liverpool Mercury._
Footnote 91:
If we compare the slight penalties inflicted for cruelties practised on women and children with those imposed for injury of property or the wounding of a stag, the property of a Duke, we cannot wonder at the low estimate, in England, of the worth of women.
Footnote 92:
_Commentaries_, p. 142, chap. viii.
Footnote 93:
There are many other instances in English law besides these mentioned above, wherein the inequality of justice, as regards the two sexes, is grossly apparent. I cannot here however dwell upon this wide and painful subject. The following detached extracts bearing on the subject are taken from a chapter of the work of an American writer on “The English Common Law:”—“In the eye of the law, female chastity is only valuable for the work it can do. The custody of children belongs to the father; the mother has no right of control. The father may dispose of them as he sees fit. If there be a legal separation, and no special order of the Court, the custody of the children (except the nutriment of infants) belongs legally to the father.” _Except the nutriment of infants!_ here is a hint from the good God himself. Should we not think that the first time these words were written down, and men were compelled to see the natural dependence of the child upon the mother—to detect the obvious laws of nurture, natural and spiritual—the right of a good mother to her child would have made itself clear? In reference to the inequality of the divorce laws, this writer says—“In the late debate in Parliament on the new Divorce Bill, when a member objected to the introduction of a clause equalizing the relief of divorce to both sexes, he asked, ‘If this clause were adopted, I should like to know how many married men there would be in this House?’ He was answered by shouts of laughter! Would these men have laughed, think you, if they had been asked how many _pure wives_ could be found in their family circles? and if _not_, would it have been because they were capable of estimating the value of womanly virtue? _No!_ for that man cannot estimate womanly virtue who has never known the worth of manly purity. It would be the spectres of illegitimacy and social ruin staring them in the face, which would turn their lips so white! In France (says the _Westminster Review_) fidelity on the part of a husband is considered a sort of imbecility. What is thought of it in England? Does this scene in Parliament, printed for all our girls to read, suggest any higher view?” “The laughter of fools,” Solomon says, “is like the crackling of thorns under a pot;” but that laughter in the English House of Commons was more like what one might expect to hear—mingled with wailings—on approaching the gates of hell.
Footnote 94:
De Lolme on the Constitution, p. 314.
Footnote 95:
Blackstone, Book i. p. 140: “Rights of Persons.”
Footnote 96:
Lord Chatham’s Speech on the case of Mr. Wilkes.
Footnote 97:
De Lolme, page 318.
Footnote 98:
Page 321.
Footnote 99:
De Lolme, page 322.
Footnote 100:
“I think with you that the extension and multiplication of such proceedings and Acts of Parliament is a grave constitutional peril, as I have said elsewhere. I think it of the greatest importance that the constitutional iniquity implied in the Contagious Diseases Acts should be fully exposed to the eyes of the whole country. It is one of the dangers of popular government that the people lose their proper suspicion of the executive and their reverence for constitutional bulwarks.”—Letter from Sheldon Amos, Esq., Professor of Jurisprudence.
Footnote 101:
I may just quote further the solemn words to which the king was compelled to give his signature, which are contained in this guaranteeing clause of Magna Charta: “Whereas for the honour of God and the amendment of our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these things aforesaid; being willing to render them firm and lasting, we do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security, namely, that the barons may choose five-and-twenty barons whom they think convenient, who shall take care with all their might to hold and observe, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted them, and by this our present Charter confirmed; so that if we, our justiciary, our bailiffs, or any of our officers, shall in any circumstance fail in the performance of them towards any person, or shall break through any of these articles of peace and security, the said barons shall”—and here follows the account of the prosecution to which the king agrees to submit himself.
Footnote 102:
Whether as they may exist under a limited monarchy, or, as in America, under a President.
Footnote 103:
The celebrated Count Oxenstierna, Chancellor of Sweden, one day when his son was expressing to him his diffidence of his own abilities, and the dread with which he thought of ever engaging in the management of public affairs, made the following Latin answer to him: “Nescis, mi fili, quantulâ sapientia regitur mundus”—“You know not, my son, with what little wisdom the world is governed.”
A young Member of Parliament, recently elected, remarked to me one day: “When one gets into Parliament, one sees that a great nation is after all like an old goat whom anybody may lead by the beard!”
Footnote 104:
_Democracy in America_, vol. iii. chap. 6.
Footnote 105:
_Democracy in America_, vol. iii. p. 297.
Footnote 106:
_Democracy in America_, vol. ii. p. 115.
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=If the Gospel narratives are Mythical, what then?=
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=Supplemental Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Scottish Seals.=
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“Neither a single story nor a batch of tales in a single volume, but a box of six pretty little books of choice fiction is Aunt Fanny’s contribution to the new supply of literary toys for the next children’s season. Imagine the delight of a little girl who, through the munificence of mamma or godmamma, finds herself possessor of Aunt Fanny’s tastefully-decorated box. Conceive the exultation with which, on raising the lid, she discovers that it contains six whole and separate volumes, and then say, you grown-up folk, whose pockets are bursting with florins, whether you do not think that a few of your pieces of white money would be well laid out in purchasing such pleasure for the tiny damsels of your acquaintance, who like to be sent to bed with the fancies of a pleasant story-teller clothing their sleepy heads with nightcaps of dreamy contentment. The only objection we can make to the quality and fashion of Aunt Fanny’s Nightcaps is, that some of their joyous notions are more calculated to keep infantile wearers awake all night than to dispose them to slumber. As nightcaps for the daytime, however, they are, one and all, excellent.”—_Athenæum._
ODDS AND ENDS—_Price 6d. Each._
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1. Sketches of Highland Character.
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5. Wayside Thoughts—Part 2.
6. Penitentiaries and Reformatories.
7. Notes from Paris.
8. Essays by an Old Man.
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11. The Cattle Plague.
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13. On the Education of Children.
14. The Stormontfield Experiments.
15. A Tract for the Times.
16. Spain in 1866.
17. The Highland Shepherd.
18. Correlation of Forces.
19. ‘Bibliomania.’
20. A Tract on Twigs.
21. Notes on Old Edinburgh.
22. Gold-Diggings in Sutherland.
23. Post-Office Telegraphs.
=The Bishop’s Walk and The Bishop’s Times.=
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CONTENTS.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● Enclosed bold or blackletter font in =equals=.