I FLUSTER THE GREAT JUPITER OF MY LITTLE WORLD.
The successful issue of this little enterprise gave me great satisfaction. There was, of course, nothing in it for me, nor did I want anything, but it furnished me with an excellent standpoint from which to address the Home Secretary should the occasion ever arise.
The occasion did arise some time after, and I utilized it in this way: A friend of mine had come over from America to see me and to try if it were not possible to obtain some reduction in the sentence. My postman warder was away at the moment, so letter-carrier facilities were cut off. I wanted very much indeed to communicate with my friend, and applied to the Home Secretary explaining the position and asking him to let me write two letters immediately. At the end of eight weeks an answer came back that the Home Secretary had carefully considered the application and could find no sufficient grounds for advising Her Majesty to grant the prayer thereof. The next day I obtained a petition sheet from the governor and wrote the following petition:
"To the Right Hon. Sir William V. Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Home Department:
"The petition of, etc., humbly showeth: That two months ago I petitioned the Home Secretary for permission to write two letters, explaining the urgency of the occasion and pointing out that the request was by no means unusual. Yesterday the answer arrived telling me, with as much truth, I have no doubt, as kindness, the anxiety with which the right honorable gentleman has been for eight weeks considering the petition.
"I hasten to express to the Home Secretary the regret I cannot but feel at the thought of causing him so much concern, which I sincerely trust has had no prejudicial effect upon his health. I regret this the more as there was really no necessity for requiring eight whole weeks of his time to the inevitable great neglect of the public business, for no man who owns or who is known to be able to get a half sovereign ever has the slightest difficulty in sending out as many clandestine letters as he chooses. This, of course, is an infraction of the rules, and any reasonable man would rather get along in a friendly spirit with the prison authorities than be at war with them, but when trifling favors which it requires but to stretch out the hand to take are refused, rules, prison authorities and the Home Secretary himself are contemptuously set aside and the forbidden favor taken.
"I trust that this knowledge will save the Home Secretary any repetition of the anxiety he has suffered on this occasion, but while regretting my want of success in petitions for myself I desire to thank the right honorable gentleman for the kind attention he pays to my petitions for others.
"The Home Secretary will perhaps remember his merciful consideration of the case of Mr. Frederick Barton, whom he released some short time ago, but it will perhaps be news to him to hear that it was I who invented Mr. Barton's fortune and wrote the petition which furnished the grounds for advising Her Most Gracious Majesty to extend her royal clemency to the deserving young man. The result of my petition by no means surprised me, for I was always confident that an English gentleman could never be guilty of the solecism against English customs implied by keeping in prison a young gentleman who could perform so meritorious an act as to fall heir to many bags of gold and sixteen thousand acres of cotton land in India.
"Mr. Barton had previously petitioned for mercy pointing out that he was but 17 years old at the time of his arrest, and asking that his extreme youth might plead for him. This petition the Home Secretary treated with very proper contempt, but it was really delightful to contrast that contempt with the respectful and instant attention shown to the petition of the young heir.
"I have a difficulty in expressing the comfort with which I saw an English Home Secretary, with all the power of the Empire in his hands to protect him against imposition, releasing a criminal after reading a sheet of foolscap covered with lies, which had been left at the Home Office by a released convict within half an hour after passing through the gates of Millbank. It is but the merest justice, however, to add that poor Mr. Smith, the presenter of the petition, was as badly humbugged as the Home Secretary himself. The glitter of gold was flashed before his eyes as it was before the eyes of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, and with equal effect.
"To me this effect was certain, as not the slightest doubt existed in my mind that the moment it became a question of great sums of money all distinctions would vanish and pickpocket and Home Secretary would scramble on to the same foothold.
"The result, it is unnecessary to add, perfectly justified me. As I watched the lucky Frederick set out to return to the stable he came from it occurred to me that had he understood German, which he did not, nor English either, for that matter, he might have whispered joyfully to himself, in the words of another dealer in ways that are dark and tricks which are vain:
"'Es ist gar hubsch von einem grossen Herrn,
So menschlich mit dem Teufel selbst zu sprechen.'
"Doubtless, however, the Home Secretary will feel, as I do myself, that he acted in this matter in accordance with the commonest dictates of duty, and I beg to assure him that, having every facility for sending out as many letters as I please, I shall never again cause him weeks of anxious consideration. Respectfully submitted,