1857.] 29 TICKET OF LEAVE. JOHN BULL is doubtless a magnificent creature; generous, brave, persevering, industrious, and all the rest of it. He flies to succour or avenge a case of oppression, domestic or foreign, as if he had the wings of his colossal Nineveh prototype. But he is also subject, like Nabucho, to occasional fits of madness; and then he is as smoky and fiery as the bulls that Jason had to tame, tossing and goring whatever comes in his way. Nor is he with. out his fits of softness-especially for criminals, whom he cherishes at times, and thinks that he is reforming scoundrels by kindness, till he finds a garotte round his neck, a life-preserver-lucus a non lucendo -at his head, a knife at his throat, or a bullet in his thorax; and then he snorts and roars, and lastly looks very blank, as he remembers an old and homely, but true proverb, though terribly in the rearward of the fashion,-Save a thief from the gallows and he'll cut your throat.' For the thief has long since been relieved from his wholesome dread of the leafless tree that never blossoms, though it still occasionally bears bitter fruit, notwithstanding the strenuous attempts of Humanitarians to cut it down. In the last century it was the fashion not to save criminals, but to run after them before the heroes suffered. To say nothing of Claude Du Val and his fair mourners, crowds of the nobility and gentry thronged to visit Captain Sheppard' in Newgate; and there his portrait was painted by no less a person than Sir James Thornhill, and recorded in The British Journal of November 28, 1724, in poetry worthy of the painter and painted: Thornhill, 'tis thine to gild with fame Apelles Alexander drew, Apelles and Thornhill! Powers Eternal, such names mingled! After all, Jack was the greater man, in his way, of the two. How things come round in cycles. Everybody knows the run at the Adelphi exciting novel; but everybody does consequent on Harrison Ainsworth's not know that Jack's exploits were closely followed by Harlequin Sheppard, a Night Scene in Grotesque Characters, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with scenes painted from the real places of action;' and that afterwards a farce, in three acts, with the title of The PrisonBreaker; or, the Adventures of John Sheppard, was printed. It is true that this farce was never acted at any of the theatres, the authorpublic, interposing; as when the ities, or the better feeling of the same causes interfered to stop the exhibition of Weare's murder at one of the Surrey theatres, with the identical gray horse that drew the gig down the fatal lane. But after The Prison-Breaker had lain a long while neglected, it appeared, intermixed with songs and catches, at Bartlemy Fair, under the name of The Quaker's Opera-why, the 'buttonless' men in drab may perhaps be able to explain. Nor was this all. Some Spurgeon of that day thus improved the occasion on a Sabbath evening Now my beloved, what a melancholy consideration it is that men should show so much regard for the preservation of a poor perishing body, that can remain at most but a few years; and at the same time be so unaccountably negli gent of a precious soul which must continue to the age of eternity! what care! what pains! what diligence, and what contrivances are made use of for, and laid out upon, these frail and tottering tabernacles of clay! when, alas! the nobler part of us is allowed so very small a share of our concern, that we scarce will give ourselves the trouble of bestowing a thought upon it. We have a remarkable instance of this in a notorious malefactor, well known by the name of Jack Sheppard! What amazing difficulties has he overcome! what astonishing things has he performed, for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcase, hardly worth hanging! How dexterously did he pick the padlock of his chains with a crooked nail! How manfully did he burst his fetters asunder, climb up the chimney, wrench out an iron bar, break his way through a stone wall, and make the strong doors of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison! and then, fixing a blanket to the wall with a spike he stole out of the chapel, how intrepidly did he descend to the top of the turner's house, and how cautiously pass down the stairs, and make his escape at the street door! O that ye were all like Jack Sheppard! Mistake me not, my brethren,-I don't mean in a carnal, but in a spiritual sense, for I purpose to spiritualize these things. What a shame it would be if we should not think it worth our while to take as much pains, and employ as many deep thoughts, to save our souls, as he has done to preserve his body! Let me exhort you, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance; burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts; mount the chimney of hope; take from thence the bar of good resolution; break through the stone wall of despair, and all the strongholds in the dark entry of the valley of the shadow of death; raise yourselves to the leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith with the spike of the church; let yourselves down to the turner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs of humility. So shall you come to the door of deliverance from the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old executioner, the Devil, who goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Those were the days when Sarah Malcolm dressed herself in red to sit to Hogarth, two days before her execution; and Horace Walpole secured the picture, for which five guineas were paid, a price less than a good copy of the print would now produce; when mezzotintos of every notorious malefactor, from Jack Sheppard to Colonel Charteris, made the fortune of printsellers. The mezzotint of the Colonel represented him as he stood at the bar, with his thumbs tied, and was accompanied by the well-known lines. This print has become very scarce; but Hogarth helped to record the Colonel's infamy, and spread it far and wide, by introducing him and John Gourley, one of his servants and panders, who swore for his master through thick and thin at the trial, in the first picture and print of the series of the Harlot's Progress.' These six pictures, which were purchased by Alderman Beckford for fourteen guineas each, and were burnt in his house at Fonthill, (1765,) would, if now in existence, bring pounds instead of the shillings. given by the Alderman.† The continuing mania of thronging to see notorious convicts, is manifest from the following extract of a letter, from the possessor of the portrait of Sarah Malcolm to Sir Horace Mann, dated Arlington-street, October 18, 1750: Robbing is the only thing that goes on with any vivacity, though my friend Mr. M'Lean is hanged. The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. You can't conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate, and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as-as-Marshal Turenne's; we have no generals worth making a parallel. The 'friend' whose execution is here noticed, was the celebrated highwayman alluded to in that part of the Long Story where the poet describes his condition on finding himself in the presence of the Peeress:' * In Fleet-street, 7th March, 1733. + Charteris, who was found guilty, was pardoned; the condition apparently being a handsome settlement which he made on Ann Bond, the Lancashire Witch, who prosecuted him. He died in Scotland on the 24th of February, 1731-2, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The somewhat ostentatious account of his death in the newspapers was followed by the celebrated epitaph. Charteris, or 'Chartres,' as Pope and Arbuthnot print the name, was twice condemned and pardoned, according to Warburton, who records the riot at his funeral, with an accompaniment of dead dogs, and makes the Colonel's age sixty-two.-See the note to Pope's Moral Essays, vol. iii. p. 218. Warburton's edition. 1857.] Horace Walpole on Highwaymen. But soon his rhetoric forsook him, He stood as mute as poor Maclean. Hogarth has introduced the grinning skeleton of the felon pointing at the hard-featured president who superintends the dissection of Tom Nero, in the last print of the Four Stages of Cruelty.' As long as criminals were either 'worked off'-it is shocking to read for what comparatively small offences so many suffered-and 'His Majesty's plantations' were open as a drain for the felon-stream, crime, especially violent crime, was in some degree kept under. But the time was now approaching when the young giant on the other side of the Atlantic was to rise in his strength, and break the chain that bound him, as Samson broke his bonds before he was shorn of his power. The plantations' were no longer His Majesty's, and though the halter was vigorously plied, it was impossible to hang everybody. Gaols were filled to fever-point; but sentences expired, if the felons did not, and the latter were turned out to prey upon society. The stoppage of the American outfall was soon severely felt. If it were not for the sad reality of the case, brought home, as it now is, to us, it would be amusing to trace its effect upon the sprightly owner of Strawberry Hill. At first, we have him making himself and his correspondents merry with the fears of a fidgety female neighbour, and the firing of her guns at night, with a view to frighten robbers. But matters soon became rather too serious for merriment; and at last we find him writing from his classical toyshop to the Countess of Ailesbury, on the 25th of June, 1778: Poor Mrs. Clive has been robbed again in her own lane, as she was last year; and has got the jaundice, she 31 thinks with the fright. I don't make a visit without a blunderbuss, so one might as well be invaded by the French. Again, on the 3rd of October, 1782, he writes from Strawberry Hill to the Earl of Strafford : When none reform themselves, little good is to be expected. We see, by the excess of highwaymen, how far evils will go before any attempt is made to cure them. I am sure, from the magnitude of this inconvenience, that I am not talking merely like an old man. I have lived here above thirty years, and used to go everywhere round, at all hours of the night, without any precaution. I cannot now stir a mile from my own house after sunset without one or two servants with blunderbusses. When things come to the worst, we are told that they will mend. A place was found The For the king to send his thieves to.* Botany Bay was discovered, though the golden bough was not. patrol was established; and soon crime sank from violence to petty larceny, fraud, and forgery, with comparatively rare exceptions. And so we went on gliding smoothly enough; judges either congratulating grand juries on the state of the calendar, or, if it happened to be numerically heavy, on the light character of the offences. We have changed all that. The southern colony grew and it grew,' till, naturally enough, it showed a disposition to kick down the ladder which had helped to make it so great, and build it up to a stronghold of power. It was too bad that it was still to be the recipient of the outcasts of the mother country.' There was some reason for this outery; and any cry is sure to be caught at as a parliamentary prize, where so many are struggling to rise from the slough of insignificance. Then came the fulfilment of Sir Roderick's prophecy, and if there had been any hesitation left, From a street ballad generally sung misinformed, in the hearing of Sir Joseph himself-about that time :Have you not heard of Captain Cook, and upon one occasion, if we are not That valiant commander; Likewise the Great Sir Joseph Banks, And Doctor Solander? How they sailed the world around, And were perplex'd and teas'd so? VOL. LV. NO. CCCXXV. с that must have settled the matter. But is there no other place in an empire on which the sun never sets For the Queen to send her thieves to? Instead of looking for what might easily have been found, a too-willing ear was lent to the maudlin sentimentality which is the curse of our time. The professors of this convictbenevolence have their reward. Some trade upon it, as certain felon-distributors of religious tracts did upon their apparent piety and charity. Many are really anxious to do good for its own sake. The mischief which both have done is incalculable. These worthies rejoice in the name of philanthropists; but the philanthropy, when analysed, turns out to be rather one-sided. The love is, not for the honest man, but for the thief; the compassion is, not for the family of the murdered man, but for the murderer. Honest poverty toils hard to keep life and soul together, and toils disregarded. Weak man! leave the crushing drudgery which furnishes you with the coarsest food and clothing, when your lordly fellow-worm will give you leave to toil, or rewards you, when worn out, with a prize of the value of a fine at a police court, for having dragged up a family with pinching wages and scanty fare,-go, rob, murder, and a host of friends will rise to move heaven and the other place to save you, after sheriff's have employed counsel to get you off in vain. Such philocleptists have the same affection for felons that Henry III. of France had for monks; till he found, too late, that a friar could on occasion carry a knife in his sleeve. In deference to such sympathizers was the ticket-of-leave system established. We will venture to say that there was no experienced practical man no man who knows how difficult it is for a convict to reform and take his place as a good citizen, if he is inclined to do so-who did not at once see that this system must be a failure, followed by the worst consequences. Witha preventive Continental police, such as we hope never to see in England, such a system might work; here it is impossible. 'But ours is a preventive police,' as we have heard it said. It is no such thing; and with our institutions, it cannot be. It may prevent the trundling of hoops on the pavement and the pedestrian sale of oranges, but it does not prevent the burglary or the murder. A foreigner once said to us-'I don't understand your police. Our police officers know all the forçats and bad characters, and pounce upon them before they commit their projected crime. Yours wait till the house is robbed or the murder committed before they apprehend the criminal; and when they have got the offender, he has every chance of escape. You have no regularly appointed public prosecutor; he has generally astute legal advocates; and if he has not, officials, whose duty it is to pursue criminals, furnish him with one." This is but too true; and the only answer was, that he did not understand our Anglo-Saxon trim-that such a police would doubtless be more protective than ours, but that such a protection as his in his own country, would be purchased at the expense of our liberties. And here lies the danger. The public is aware that most, if not every one of the ticket-of-leave men who have spread the reign of terror in this well-lighted and crowded metropolis, are in the black list of the police, and wants to know why they are not taken up. The only remedy that we can suggest under the present circumstances, and until the system is, as it must be, put an end to We are promised a reform in the law,-as we have been ever since we can remember anything. In the mean time we have daily ocular demonstration of what happens while the grass grows. An appeal to our law courts is dreaded by every injured person; and few are aware how much iniquity is borne and made matter of compromise rather than have recourse to tribunals which would leave the sufferers in the situation of the parties to Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. No wonder. Look at two of the cases now illustrating the sort of remedy given in our civil and criminal courts,-that of the British Bank, and the great bullion robbery; in each of which the victims are fought with their own money. 1857.] Present State of the Metropolis. though we are averse to particular legislation-is to pass an act upon the principle of the Vagrant Act, but more stringent and specially applicable, which, as we have had The Black Act,' may be called The Ticket-of-leave Act.' But is there to be no reformation for criminals, no locus penitentia? Heaven forbid! though he has a very improvable acquaintance with human nature who does not know how difficult such a reform is. With an erring brother it may be possible; but her own sex are too unforgiving to permit it to an erring sister for what is surely a much more venial fault than robbery. We all know what follows When lovely woman stoops to folly: The door is sternly shut. If felons are to be reformed, it is quite clear that the method cannot be by ticket of leave, with any security for the honest part of the community. It would be ludicrous, if our position were not too serious, to observe the quiet audacity with which the advocates for the plan claim for it 'marked success;' when all London is frightened from its propriety; when hardly a day has passed at a police court without a charge against a ticket-of-leave man for some atrocity. We should have thought that 'Pinch him tighter-pinch him tighter,' and actual cold-blooded murder, might have imported a doubt into the most humane mind. But no! The villains are hunting in packs, like the Mohocks of Queen Anne's time, and the wolves; no one who is not armed has any chance after nightfall if he falls among them, and not much if he is; and this we are told is a marked success.' To what a state must this hitherto orderly metropolis be reduced, when the newspapers, even those which, rightly or wrongly, are supposed to be the organs of Government, advise the Queen's subjects to return to the earliest state of society, when it flourished under The good old rule-the simple plan: That he should take who had the power, And he should keep who can; and exhorts us to take our protection into our own hands, and go 33 armed. Our best possible public instructors have joined in a chorus of Arm, arm, ye brave! But just think what London would be with our 'gents' emulating their American cousins, and parading the streets with revolvers and bowie knives, drunk or sober, prepared for any difficulty.' One really is staggered at seeing that, notwithstanding the fearful daily catalogue of ticket-of-leave crime, the system appears to be still in full operation. We take a case at random : SOUTHWARK, THIS DAY. ROBBERY BY A TICKET-OF-LEAVE CONVICT.-George White, an ill-looking fellow, who has only within the last few days received his ticket of leave from Government, having been transported for seven years, was brought up in the custody of Ainshaw, 507 A, charged with the following daring robbery :William Lister, a lad in the employ of Mr. Putley, butcher, Blackman-street, evening he was carrying a tray of meat Borough, stated that on the previous on his shoulder to leave at different customers. While passing Dodson, the baker's, the prisoner and another rushed out of a court adjacent, and nearly pushed him down. He then saw the prisoner snatch a large piece of beef off the tray and run away with it. Witness pursued him, and saw him drop it, and a minute or two afterwards he was in custody. The prisoner here denied having taken the beef. The reason he ran was because he saw other persons running. Police-constable 507 A said he took the prisoner into custody, and on searching him, found a ticket of leave in his pocket, which certified that the prisoner was tried in July, 1850, and transported for seven years, and that he was liberated on the 10th of the present month. Mr. Combe said he was surprised that such a character should have been allowed a ticket of leave. From the document handed to him by the constable, it appeared that the sentence would have expired in a few months; besides that, he perceived a piece of parchment attached to it, giving him a character. The latter set forth that 'George White's conduct was rather good on the public works, but indifferent in the prison.' Now, he should have thought that sufficient for the authorities to have detained him until the expiration of his sentence, and not send such a character loose on the world, with a ticket of leave. He asked the prisoner |