The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-22 00:00:00

The report which we published on Thursday last
of the proceedings at the Maidstone Petty Sessions
involves a case, the importance of which is not to be
measured by the miserable amount of the property—
ten turnips valued at 4d.—for which the unfortunate
delinquent, charged with the offence of stealing it,
was brought before a bench of Kentish magistrates.
Those magistrates, we at once admit, had no discre-
tion leit them in this case of SARAH GREENGROVE•
The prosecutor, a farmer named BAXTER, disregard-
ing the statement of the unhappy girl herself, who
acknowledged that she had taken up four turnips,
prompted by the cravings of fierce hunger—unmoved
by the simple but impressive appeal of the Chairman,
who recommended him not to press the charge, per-
sisted in his demand for " justice" (!); and the Bench
sentenced her to pay the value of the turnips and the
amount of the penalty and the costs. Now let us
examine the facts of this case a little more narrowly.
They may supply a key to the origin of prevalent
offences—aye,of prevalent crimes of a far deeper dye,
and of consequences infinitely more wasting and ter-
rible.

The girl, aged fifteen years only, was on her re-
urn from Marden, where she had been hopping ;
and, exhausted with fatigue, thirst and hunger, she
was observed by a labourer in BAXTER'S service to
enter one of prosecutor's fields, and draw, not ten, but
four, turnips. The Chairman remarked on the posi-
tion he was•placed in by her own admissions, sug-
gesting, however, that, as she did not appear to have
committed any depredations of this kind before, he
would leave it to Mr. BAXTER'S discretion whether
to proceed further or not. BAXTER, not be-
cause he disputed the fact of the girl's being
unimplicated in any former depredation, but
" because he had lost a great many turnips
by other offenders," and been subject to
several severe "depredations" lately on his farm—
insisted on pressing the charge against GREENGROVE.
The Chairman in vain pointed out the difference
between her case and that of the old offenders, of
whom he was now speaking. BAXTER, who talked
as if it was a question of hungry rabbits, instead of
human beings, remarked that "he had a
great difficulty in catching them, and he
was determined to make -an example"—not of them,
the " old offenders"—but "of the first one he could
lay hold of;" old or new. The Chairman was thus
compelled to proceed in the discharge of his painful
duty. When he had delivered the sentence of the
Court, the wretched girl stated " she had no money."
With a degree of humanity, which it, does not seem
that the prosecutor had the merit of originating, the
Court desired her to sit down ; and we can well ima-
gine the trembling anxiety with which she must have
awaited the making out of the order to commit her to
gaol in default of payment. Was she, though young
in years, old in crime ?—an experienced depredator ?
—a regularly trained " depredator ?" Was she of-
that character and those connexions which would
justify, in the opinion of some, the remorseless se-
verity of the farmer towards her ? Why, what
followed ? Let us judge of the probabilities by
the facts. A little boy entered the court crying
bitterly, approached the bench, and tendered the
amount " decreed and decerned against her," as the
Scotch lawyers would say, which amount he had
raised by taking his shoes from off his own
feet and pawning them. This was the poor
delinquent's brother. Will any man undertake
to say that the girl_can have been a depraved and ac-
customed thief, or her family one supported by field
" depredations," or other courses of habitual dis-
honesty, in the face of so touching an example of
afisleauft as this subsisting between the
brother and the sister ? Is theirs a case with many
parallels in higher ranks and among relatives of much
ampler and loftier fortunes ? Do the records of our
courts of law, or our criminal judicature, supply mans
such examplifications of that principle of pure affection
Alich prompts one individual to denude himself of
his own property to rescue another, his kinsman, from
the inability to meet the amercement of a criminal
court or the finding of a jury in a civil action ? Be
it remembered that the boy's sacrifice was fully a,
great in proportion as any which wealthier parties
could have made, to whatever amount they might
have carried theirs.
But now what shall we think of the landowner
legislation—of the landlord-made laws—which
enacts such monstrous immorality and injustice
as are obviously illustrated by this very
;ase ? To steal turnips is an offence against
property, and must be repressed by certain pe-
nalties. , Granted, if you will. But are there to be
no checks, no modifications, upon those penalties,
according to circumstances? The value of the pro-
perty, here, is found—(on no lenient mitigating re-
presentation, observe, of a reluctant accuser, but on
the statement of a party, anxious, by his own showing,
to inflict, on the first offender " he can catch," his re-
sentment for the depredations committed by others)—
at fourpence. The bench, under the instructions of
the statute, award fourpence for the property. But
then the penalty ? How much, in such a trumpery
ease, shall be the penalty to vindicate the offended
law ? Sixpence more. The sum of tenpence the poor
irl cannot pay—the hard-hearted prosecutor will not
remit. Of non-payment, imprisonment for a limited
period—nicely ascertained by a penal " sliding scale"
.if terms of incarceration—is the assigned and only
alternative. Hard enough this on the delinquent. .But
is this all ? No. Property and penalty are satisfied,
with tenpence : but costs—costs, that is to say, in the
shape of fees to the magistrates' clerk, or the clerk

of the peace, or some other cmall legal minnow of

insatiable office appetite ;—these amount to rather
more than four times the whole charge for penalty
rind property I Away, then, with the trumpery
pretence of vindicating law and property by such
ainercennents. They are meant to feed the never-

ending, everywhere planted, all-absorbing feelers of
the law staff, which in this country are the beginning
and the ending of all things. In the case of GREEN-

GROVE, a benevolent man sat as chairman, and doubt.

less his brother magistrates concurred in his feeling.
The money was refunded—by slme one—to the
noble boy.

A word, now, to over severe farmers and landlord
legislators. Do they imagine (we put the case we
have been discussing out of the question, and speak of
a whole class, not of a solitary example)—do they
suppose that they will increase, in starving and pau-
perised labourers, respect for property, by overstrain-
ing the vengeance of the law against the most paltry
transgressions upon it ? Do they fancy that the

public cannot see through the flimsy disguise which
interposes itself between the ostensible object of petty
larceny and summary jurisdictive Acts of Parliament
such as we have alluded to, and the miserable, sordid

selfishness, which originates and passes them ? Do
they expect to extinguish the secret torch of the

prowling incendiary, by multiplying penalties upon
their devoted heads when the desperation of hunger

has driven to a twopenny outrage on the products

- -
of other men's fields ? Do they conceive that the best

course of securing the abstinence of wayfaring
paupers in search of work from pillage, and even
violence,--" is to lie perdue," as it were, " ttt, catch
the first" and most helplek‘, and most pitiable of-
fender? Do they persuade themselves that, to show
no pity for others, is to ensure respect for them-
selves?

Madrid jouanals-or the 12th and 13th instant have
been received. The Chamber of Deputies met again
on the 13th, and, after s+nne routine business, ad.
journed. After the adjournment, about 150 Deputies

partridge, from a neighbouring preserve that con-
tains hundreds of them, reared with no other view
than to contribute to their owner's amusement, he is
committing such a flagrant outrage against so-
ciety as his inexorable judges uniformly assure
him is the case. Bitterly—most bitterly he resents
the punishment awarded him for his transgression
against the, demoralizing Game-laws ; and when the
period of his imprisonment has expired, and he again
comes forth into the word, a free man, his whole na-
ture has undergone a change ; he feels that he has
been made the victim, not so much of justice, as of
arbitrary, self-interested authority ; and this conviction
renders him reckless—desperate—and eager to revenge
on society the wrongs which he conceives he has sus-
tained at its hands. How many a criminal of the blackest
die, who has held the blazing torch of " Swing," and
even shed the blood of his fellow-creatures, may trace
his ruin to the day when he was first convicted of
poaching, and punished for the offence with as much
remorseless severity as if he had perpetrated an act of
he most atrocious character !