The Report of Commitments...
The Times, 1824-11-26T00:00:00

The Iteport of Commitments unider the Vagrant Laws wouldbe afearfuldocamenttoplacein the handsoof aforeign- er, in so far as it might af ect his conclusions upon two im- portant points--viz. the humanity of our magistrates, and the morals of the English people. It is impossible to glance, though ever so hastily, at the crowded pages of these re- turns, withoutperceiving the wondrous extent and diversity of human actions, which mnay be classed as criminal or otherwise, according to the wiU of the worshipful person who decides upon thern. If certaiinty be a characteristic excellestce of British law, the excellence of thse vagranzt law undoubtedly is not owing to any such old-fashioned attri- bute. Enormous is the discretionary power which it lodges with each Justice of the IPeace, and liberal, to say the least of it, is the use which he seems to make of that discretion. We profess not by any means to impugn the wisdom or the lenity of Parliament in leaving so much to the accidental character of those who sit as judges upon their own imme- diate neighbourxs. It is, perhaps, to be hardly questioned, that as ofi'ences are more minute, they become less capable of accurate definitionl; but this only makes the misfortune greater, because it then follows, from the nature of things, that the higher Judges of the country, whose competence of knowledge and whose stake of reputation are such as' to qualify them for a sagacious discernment of right, and for a temperate exercise of power,-that such men may have their hands most rigorously tied up, while the lower tribunals must be vested with a looser and more elastic authority,-that the rich, who betake themselves to the King's Courts, and whose place in society forms a joint sareguard with their wealth against the pos- sible opprmssions of the Judges, are still further fortified by the superior perfection of that department of our jurispru- dence to which they are chiefly amenable; while the labour- ing man or the wanderer, whose destitution renders him more helpless to resist the abuse of powver, exposes him also to a species of power in itself more liable to abuse. The returns from the several counties and mainor jurisdic- tions are copious, with regard to the names and general classes, as wel of the-culprits as of their imputed crimes: the great let'ect is in the obscurity thrown round the ma- gistrates, none of whose names have been suffered on this occasion to transpire. Then, as to the nature of the offences themselves-one individual is committed for being a Gipsy-a second forpretending to be a Gipsy! Under what statute, or on what principle, is such a personation to be punished? Hundreds are committed for sleeping in outhouses-is it criminal to have no better place of refuge ? Some for " wandering abroad as minstrels." Is music of necessity a just provocation to the magistrate? The&aands are sent to prison for "lodging in the open air !" In the single county of Kent, the report of which we have opened by mere accident, 1,061 poor creatures are made prison- ers, and set to labour in the House of Correction, for no offence apparent on the face of this public voucher, but that of" not knowing whereto lay their heads." Now, we are not unreasonable in submitting, that for the character of the country with foreign nations, some special circumstance ought to be added, to justify a committal to prison, for that which bears upon the front of it misfortune and mi- sery, but no shadow of guilt. There are, unhappily, cases enough in these returns which require no such explanatiou. An unwillingness to work for his own support, or that of his family, is a frequent cause assigned for the imprison- mentor the Englich lahburour-anad a jiat ono. If thb eor- ruption of the poor-law system has been such as to lower the feeling of the working classes, and to make them con- sider the question of self or parochial maintenance not as one of pride or scandal, but simply under the aspect of profit or loss, there seems nothing left but to treat the fallen spirit as we find it, and to stimulate by ehastisement those who are not susceptible of shame. A dreadful fea- ture in the Report is the extraordinary number of married men committed for running awayfrom their families, and loaving them to starve, or to sponge upon their neighbours for subsistence. This is d]eplerable, from the utter absence which it seems to indicate of those natural affections which raise man above the brutes, and the want of which, when it spreads amongst a people, must lead to the lowest and most heartless degradation. We can imagine instances where an intdifferent labourer may excuse his flight from home by the belief that in his absence the parish will do for the wife and children more than he could effect for them by his proper industry; but such exceptions must be very rare, and quite insuficient to wipe from our convic- tion the stain which a practice, so frequent as well as wick- ed, must be acknowledged to cast upon the morals of the lower orders in this country.