The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-09-09
A Curious English Custom Ruth ana
BOaZ MOdernized.

From the London Spectator
There are people in London, and presumably
in Manchester and other great towns, who
believe that the Eighth Commandment is in
some mysterious way suspended about corn;
that the wives of the laborers in any given
parish have clear right, moral and legal, to
plumber the farmer of portion of the produce
OF his fields; that the maddest and wicSedest
saturnalia of the year, 10 which fairs are lnno-
cent aud camp-meettngs pure, are institutions
justiiying any number of screaming leaders in
their defense. The right of theft does not even
in theory extend to the farmers silver spoons,
or to his banker $ balance, or even-we have no
stacked in his rickyard; but as far as regards
the same grain when LAID out IN
the field IL is prescriptlye, immSt-
able, and E. divine, to be ,ieGen. defended by
tury versions of the story of Boaz and Ruth,
versions in which the entire meaning OF that
exquisitely poetical but surely not divine ldyl Is
perverted into Justification of deliberate theft.
Cleaning is one of the customs which, though
originally it may be harmless, or even an
acknowledgment of certain rights in the soil
and its produce, are now simply causes of
generalization. Like most other incidents of
feudal society, it has become unreal, has lost
its old compensatlons and tends only to keep
up the degradation OF the poor. The custom
destroys, TO begin wilh the very imperfect
ideas current IN villages OF the Bghtn
Commandment. Under the old system OF reap
ing with the sickle welded entirely by men
born and bred upon the and, and paid in any
thing except money, a certain quantity OF cora,
usually exceedingly small was left upon the
ted and as 1t cost more TO pick up than 1t was
Worth any onG or 70 child r.rG born in
was allowed 10 tighten those rates by carrying
it away. Neither the scythe nor the reaping
machine leaves this corn, but The custom of
cleaning has continued; and as the women will
not work for nothing, they come to an arrange
ment with their husbands or brothers, if they
are the mowers, or with the lrishmen, II they
are employed, to leave wilfully a quantity of the
AL ~ % U
and sound practice of giving the harvest work
to neghbors is observed, increases every year,
Till the amount wiliully left-that is, stolen
amounts often to five per cent. upon the total, a
tax OF u shilling in the pound Illegally imposed
upon the most important or our manufactures.
No possible overseeing will prevent this
ofiense. The women are mad for the corn,
and if they cannot prevail IN any other way
they will offer bribes which the overseeIs
can no more. resist than the reapers will.
Naturally the farmer objecs-as we almost ven-
ture to believe, If the news-venders' wives
claimed every twentieth copy of the Telegraph
without purchase, the proprletors of that jour
nal would oblect-and the squres and clergy
JON in the objection for other reasons. Did tn
writer of that astonishing article about "Roberts
VS.. JONES'" and Boaz and Ruth, and pastoral
arrangements generally, which appeared in the
1etegrGph OF Tuesday, ever see village return
ing from a successful toray after illicit corn?
We have, and we appeal TO any county clergy.
man in England If we exaggerate when we
say the toray is utterly demoralizing; that
mothers of families ard trig glrls whom others
than agricuturists might admire and return
hall mad, Bacchante-llEe viragoes, their arms
full, their bosoms exposed, their petticoats
over their heads, their mouths choked with
songs Mr.. Swiuburne dare not PRINT 1t is a
mad, bad festival of license. dreaded by every
good clergyman, every decent mother in Israel,
three times as much as an ordinary fair. Its
effect, moreover, Is confined to the women.
Nothing that corrupts them leaves men un-
scathed, but part from that the system teaches
and protects the practice of theft, which is the
voice of our rural districts. How is man to
be taught that his nelghbors corn, or fruit,
or rabbits are not his, wnen for one month in
every year he is deliberately instructed by the
metropolitan press that in protecting his pro-
perty their owner commits a crime? What is
the wonder that in Essex or Suffolk man
who presumes to protect peaches which cost
him shilling apiece by sending thief to
| the petty sessions is hooted till his life is
misery to him, till, in des 2alr of obtaining
| justice, he cuts his fruit trees down, or takes
| the law into his own hands? Well, Mr.. Roberts,
of Cheshire, being unable to afford the pillage,
being also, it may be, little scandallzed at con.
sequences of that pillage, at which we have only
dared to hint vaguely, proclaims that he will
Vincible, by protests makes, as he says, Eau
example" He prosecutes a woman. The
bench, knowing what cleaning means, con-
demned her to seven days Imprisonment. The
woman had no right whatever to Mr.. Roberts
property. Mr.. Johnsons exclamation, I'VE
shall have all the newspapers III England down
on us" struck AT the very roOC OF law and
order which are maintained by magistrates exc
cutting the law as passed by Parliament and not
as passed by newspapers-and the attack on Mr..
Roberts is a direct attempt to excite popular
prejudice in favor of custom of theft. But
we shall be asked, are the laborers to have
none of the grain their labor produces? Not
one grain in that way; not one straw by theft.
We wish the laborer mad third Of the crop he
grows for his own use, but we would rather
hang him than see him steal it with impunity,
and cleaning is now neither more nor less
than an unpunished and specially demoralizng
form of theft. Ruths example would not
justify that, if Ruth had stolen; and the writer's
who quote her as an example for thieves forget
always that BoaZ was owner. that BoaZ'5
permission was needul before she could CLEAN
as she would. AT this moment as then, cleaning
is a privilege IN the Oriental world; and now as
then, Boaz must give the order before the
"yonng men" eught to ''let fall some of the
handfuls on purpose for her, and leave that she
may CLEAN them"