The Sun.
London, England, 1851-05-21 00:00:00

charge his duty towards a gentleman so highly connected.
Had Captain Somerset known the price be was to pay fur
the pleasure of whipping a police officer, what amount of
discourtesy or incivility would have moved him to raiso
hand against the constable? his horse might have
kicked, and locked the phaeton to pieces, and ho would
have submitted patiently rather than visit the House of
Correction. But the pernicious notion in his head
which let loose his passions and his hands was that a
fine of 5/. acquitted all scores of outrage and brutality.
How much the public peace and security would gain if
the law applicable to the protection of the police were
applicable to the protection of the rest of the community.
What! interposes some one, would you give magis-
trates such a summary power over the liberty of
the subject ? Why, if they can be safely trusted
with the power when the police are concerned, why
are they to be supposed less trustworthy in
other cases ? And they do exercise the power over
the liberty of the poor, who are sentenced
to gaol in default of the payment of the fine. It is the
iniquity of the system of fines that it spares
the rich in
every way. A maximum is fixed, with which injustice
prepense declares that the fine shall not be propor-
tioned to the large means of the rich offender ;
and a minimum is also fixed with injustice prepense,
which declares that the fine shall not be
proportioned to the slender means of the poor offender.
The rich man goes to gaol when be commits theindis-
cretion of assaulting a constable. The poor man goes to
gaol for a petty assault, in default of a penalty of 40s. or
less; and with the loss of his liberty for a few days he
may lose hie character and his livelihood.

DECISIONI.IVTH.E SOMERSET CASE.
A WARNING TO THE ROTTEN-ROWITES.
Mr. Hardwick has won golden opinions from all right-
judging people by his decision in the case of Captain
Paulett Somerset. Looked at in every point of view, the
judgment was most just and satisfactory. Here was an
officer in her Majesty's service—a man, the very es•
sence of whose profession consists in knowing how to
obey and how to command, wilfully refusing obedience
to a known police regulation, and so far losing all
command of himself as violently and brutally to assault
the officer who was only seeking to put that regulation
'in force. The case was, in fact, surrounded with every
circumstance of aggravation. The captain bad been
warned at Kensington-gate of the existence of the order
in question. The constable at that gate attempted to
stop him. He lashed his horses into a gallop, and when
the second policeman, at considerable personal peril,
endeavoured to arrest his course, he flogged the man
violently about the head and shoulders, drawing blood
from his face in two or three places. The conduct of the
captain, when before the magistrate, was not such as to
palliate his offence ; he complained that he not been
treated by the police with the civility due to a gentle-
man:—had their mode of address been more courteous,
ho would have desisted from his attempt to effect his
passage. This plea, which, under no circumstasces
could be held as amounting to a justification, was nega-
tived by the evidence of the witnesses and by the facts
of the case. The captain evidently intended, from the
first, to treat the police regulation with defiance, and
thereby, as far as in him lay, to set an example of dis
order at a place, and on an occasion in which the pre-
servation of order was of essential importance to the
comfort and security of the public.
Under such circumstances, Mr. Hardwick very pro-
perly decided upon inflicting the only penalty which, on
a person in Captain Somerset's station, would operate as
an effectual punishment. A fine to the highest amount
in the magistrate's power would have been a mere
mockery: not so, the alternative of ten days' imprison-
ment in the House of Correction.

We are aware of the argument, that in fact, though not
in philosophy, the nature of the punishment is regarded
in these cases as the degrading thing, not the nature ot
the offence; and that an infamous punishment operates
more severely on a man of the higher classes. We
very much doubt the fact on which this argument is
based. Suppose, for instance, that, instead of an officer
holding her Majesty's commission, the offender in this
case had been a warehouseman, or lawyer's clerk, or
druggist's apprentice, we question exceedingly whether
the deprivation of place and salary, which would in this
case almost inevitably have followed from such a sen-
tence, would not, in point of severity, have far exceeded
any penal consequences that are likely to flow from the
sentence passed on Captai❑ Somerset. As to the ridicule
and social obloquy attending such a conviction, that is
probably pretty equal in both classes of cases, and is
only more noticeable in the case of the higher class cul-
prit, because the people who govern the talk and fashion
the opinions of the great world belong to the same order,
and feel their class-dignity wounded through his punish-
ment.

But even conceding that honour becomes more sensi-
tive as we ascend in the social scale, and that a discre-
ditable penalty might in its consequences prove more dis-
tressing to an aristocratic than to a plebeian offender, is
it not just that it should be so? If the social influences
are at all to be taken into the account, let us, at all events,
take them into the account fairly. If it be correct to say
that the refinements of caste make a degrading punish-
ment more severe, it is quite as correct to say, that
they ought to operate in making a discreditable offence
more penal. Ten days in the House of Correction is a
greater punishment to a gentleman than it would be to
a mechanic. Be it so; but, at all events, admit that
the offence for which the penalty is awarded, is less
venial in the gentleman than it would have been in the
mechanic. The advantages of class should never be
taken into consideration as a plea for the mitigation of
punishment, where they have been found ineffectual for
the prevention of offence. If a gentleman has behaved
with the brutality of a coalheaver, let him not, on the
ground of his gentility, escape a coalheauer's punish-
ment.—Weekly News.