“For heaven’s sake,” begged the lord, “don’t do that or I shall be disgraced forever.”
What also surprised me was that there were two kinds of justice; one for the rich people of rank and another for the poor.
It appeared that there was a Mary Joyce in the city. Her husband was a mechanic, a good workman, temperate and industrious. She was a careful, prudent woman. They lived well upon his earnings. One day he was killed by an accident. It took all the wife’s savings to bury the body of her husband. Then, to sustain herself and child, the articles in her rooms were sold, one after another, until nothing was left but the clothes on her body, a tattered quilt, some straw on the floor, an iron spoon and a dish or two. She had tried to get work time and again, but failed. She had asked for help, but was refused. One night, hungry herself, but thinking only of her starving child, she wrapped it in the quilt and placed it upon the straw and went out into the darkness. She came to a baker’s shop. Without a thought but of her dying babe, she seized one of the loaves and rushed away. A cry was raised, a policeman caught her and took her to prison, and the next morning at the Mansion House Court she was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. She was placed in a foul smelling cell, given the smallest allowance of the coarsest food for herself and babe. By day she had to be in the company of the vilest humanity, and submit to the insults and cruelties of the gaolers, and all this for taking a loaf of bread to keep her child from starving.
The other case was of a duchess, a woman of intelligence, position and wealth. She knew better than to do wrong. There was no need for her to violate the laws. She committed a crime, and the judge stated his regret that he was obliged by law to convict her. If he could possibly have found an excuse he would have released her on account of her rank and wealth, as he expressed himself, so he gave her a sentence of six weeks, and all “society” stood aghast to think they should be attacked in that way. She was allowed two large, airy rooms in a prison. The floors were carpeted. Fine furniture was placed in them. She was permitted two attendants of her own. Excellent food was prepared outside and brought to her. She had books and papers, and was allowed to receive visitors, and to have her daily walks without seeing the other prisoners. She was an aristocrat, a lady in “society,” and it would not do for a judge to place her on a level with a poor woman of lower class blood! What would “society” say?
But is there an aristocracy in crime? Is not a thief a thief? Did not the higher rank and intelligence of the duchess entitle her to a greater punishment? Poor Mary Joyce, obeying a God-given instinct to save her starving babe, took a loaf of bread. The duchess, to gratify a whim of her haughty nature, committed a greater crime than the other and was not punished at all but slightly disgraced, which society readily condones and regards her as a martyr. Such is impartial English justice!
We have, however, something like it in India. A rajah has amassed wealth by oppressing his ryots and taking usury from the poor. On account of some paltry gift to the Dufferin Fund or subscription to some begging paper to raise a monument to some man whom the people would not care to remember, he is granted the privilege by Government of not obeying a summons to appear as a witness in court. He could be driven there every day and it would be only a pleasure nor would there be any loss to him in any way.
Another, a ryot of this man, is obliged to go from twenty to fifty miles on foot. He is compelled to hang around from a week to twenty days or has to go several times. While away from home his fields are neglected and the crop on which he and his family depended for the year’s food is lost. What recourse has he? None whatever. What is the difference in the two cases? It is this. The one is a wealthy rajah and the other a poor devil of a ryot. Such is justice in India so like that in England.
My best argument for immortality is this, that there must be, in all justice, some other place or some future when the accounts of this life shall be balanced, for there is no equity here.
These were my reflections in my room at my lodgings at the close of my privileged leave.
However, in vindication of myself, that to make some atonement,—as I am not without good impulses at times—for the misdemeanors of the morning, if such they may be called, in going to see the ranks of the city, high rank and low rank, the latter of the rankest kind,—I went to a church in the evening where there was a very quiet unpretentious service in which there was a real sincere worship of God. I felt better for it, thanking God that while there was so much of vanity, vice and want in the city, there were also some righteous people, truly noble, belonging to the nobility of heaven.