the private suitor should be allowed to exaggerate without smarting for it in the verdict, just as in the world overloaded invective recoils upon the shooter.-I am, Sir, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD, COLONEL BAKER'S SENTENCE TO THE EDITOR OF THE "DAILY TELEGRAPH " SIR, A great many journals and weeklies have told the public that an English judge has passed too lenient a sentence on Colonel Baker because he belongs to the upper classes. Some have added that the same judge had inflicted a severe sentence on certain gas stokers, and so we have a partial judge upon the bench. This is a grave conclusion, and, if true, would be deplorable. You would yourself regret it, and therefore will, I am sure, permit me to show you, by hard facts, that all this is not only untrue, but the exact opposite of the truth in every particular. Fact 1. The proceedings against Baker commenced with an application for delay and a special jury. Here was an opportunity to favour him. The judge rejected the application, and he was tried by a common jury. 2. On the trial the prosecuting counsel attacked him with a severity that is now unusual, and used a false comparison to lead the jury farther than the evidence warranted. 3. In contrast to this, Baker was defended with strict moderation. In France the accused speaks as well as his counsel, but in England his own mouth is closed, and we must assume instructions and give him the credit or discredit due to his line of defence. Now, there was a point in the plaintiff's evidence which to my mind is womanly and charming, but still, before a common jury, Mr. Hawkins could have done almost what he liked with it. It appeared that when the young lady was on the doorstep she told her assailant he must hold her or she would fall. They little know the power of counsel who doubt that, by a series of sly ironical questions on this point, the case could have been weakened by ridicule, and the plaintiff tortured. Since the lower orders have been dragged into this, it should be considered that every one of them would have so defended himself, except those who had How got rid of the case before by shoving the girl off the step instead of holding her. "That is the sort of men they are. My brilliant contemporaries know nothing about them. should they, being in an exalted sphere? 4. The common jury cleared him of a criminal assault, and found him guilty of an indecent assault. My brilliant contemporaries hanker after the higher issue, and would like to see it in the judgment, though it was not in the verdict. But that would be to juggle with the constitutional tribunal, and be inexcusable in a judge. 5. Mr. Justice Brett dwelt on the enormity of the offence, and admitted only one palliating circumstance-viz., that the culprit, when he found the lady would risk her life sooner than be insulted, came to his senses, and showed a tardy compunction. This was so; and Colonel Baker's line of defence before the magistrates and before the court entitled him to this small palliation. 6. Witnesses were called to character, with a view to mitigating punishment. Now, when a culprit of the lower orders can do this effectually, it always reduces punishment-sometimes one half, or more. Were it to go for nothing where a gentleman has committed his first public crime, there would be gross partiality in favour of the lower orders, and an utter defiance of precedent. 7. The punishment inflicted was a fine, £500, and a year's imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant. My brilliant contemporaries think that a poor man would have been much worse punished. Now let us understand one another. Do they mean a poor man who had so assaulted a lady, or a poor man who had so assaulted a poor woman? Their language only fits the latter view. Very well, then. My brilliant contemporaries have eaten the insane root that takes the reason prisoner. Every day in the year men of the lower orders commit two thousand such assaults upon women of the lower orders, and it is so little thought of that the culprits are rarely brought to justice at all. When they are, it is a police magistrate, and not a jury, the women apply to. It is dealt with on the spot by a small fine or a very short imprisonment. Colonel Baker, had he been a navvy, would have got one month. My brilliant contemporaries go to their imagination for their facts. I, poor drudge, go to one out of twenty folio notebooks in which I have entered, alphabetically, the curious facts of the day for many a year. The fines for indecent assaults range from five pounds to twenty. Amongst the examples is one that goes far beyond Baker's case, for the culprit had recourse to chloroform. I call this a criminal assault. The magistrate, however, had a doubt, and admitted the culprit to bail. At the expiration of the bail the Lucretia in humble life walked into the court on Tarquin's arm, and begged to withdraw the plaint. She had married him in that brief interval. And that, O too imaginative contemporaries, "is the sort of women they are. The magistrate scolded them both, and said it was collusion to defeat the law. He lacked humour, poor man. When a lady or a gentleman is one of the parties that immediately elevates the offence. I have a case in my list that resembles Baker's in some respects. It was a railway case- -the offender a gentleman, the plaintiff a respectable milliner. dealt with at quarter sessions; fine £200, no imprisonment. In Craft's case the parties were reversed. Craft, a carpenter, at Farringdon, kissed by force the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman. She took him before a jury, and he got six months. But her Majesty remitted three months of this sentence. This was I am informed there was a case the other day, and a bad one-punishment two months. But I will not be sure, for I have not seen it. Of this I am absolutely sure, that Baker's sentence is severe beyond all precedent. His fine is more than double the highest previous fine. His imprisonment, if not shortened, will be four times the term of Craft's, and about twelve times what, if the female had been in humble life, a blackguard by descent and inheritance would have got, and he is both fined and imprisoned. I think it most proper a gentleman should be more severely punished for so heinous an offence. But it is not proper that facts should be turned clean topsy-turvy, and the public humbugged into believing that the lower order of people are treated more severely in such cases, when, on the contrary, they are treated with gross partiality; still less is it proper that these prodigious errors of fact should be used to cast a slur upon the just reputation of a very sagacious, careful, and independent judge. To drag the gas stokers' case into this question is monstrous. Law has many branches, and a somewhat arbitrary scale of punishments that binds the judges more or less. As a rule it treats offences against the person more lightly than offences against property-ay, even when marks of injury have been left upon the person for months. Now, the law of England abhors conspiracy, and Mr. Justice Brett found the law; he did not make it, nor yet did his grandfather. The gas stokers' sentence had nothing on earth to do with their birth and parentage. They were representative men-the ringleaders of a great conspiracy, and the only offenders nailed in a case where our gaols ought to have been filled with the blackguards. It was a heartless, egotistical, and brutal conspiracy; its object a fraud, and its instrument a public calamity. The associated egotists inflicted darkness on a great city during the hours of traffic. They not only incommoded a vast public cruelly; they also added to the perils of the city, and most likely injured life and limb. The judge who punished these deliberate and combined criminals severely was the mouthpiece of an offended and injured public, and not of any clique whatever; for no clique monopolises light nor can do without it, least of all the poor. He gave his reasons at the time, and the press approved them, as anybody can see by turning to the files. To these facts, sir, I beg to add a grain of common What is there in a British colonel to dazzle a British judge? The judge is a much greater man in society and in the country; and in court he is above the Princes of the Blood, for he represents the person and wields the power of the Sovereign. Class distinctions do not much affect the judges of our day. They sit too high above all classes. One or two of them, I see, share the universal foible, and truckle a little to the press. If a modern judge is above that universal weakness, he is above everything but his conscience and his God. Perhaps my brilliant contemporaries have observed that solitary foible in our judges, and are resolved that Mr. Justice Brett shall not overrate their ability to gauge his intellects or his character. If that was their object, they have written well. sense. CHARLES READE. August 30th, 1875. |