Small Talk at Wreyland. Second Series

by Cecil Torr

Another friend also had a younger brother who caused him much anxiety, and he unburdens himself in his letters to my father—Dick has been getting drunk, Dick has been making love, Dick has been borrowing money, Dick is dragging our good name in the mire. Thirty years afterwards he writes, “The assizes are just over, and Richard has tried the cases here with great ability and dignity.” I need hardly say that I have changed his name.

There is a letter to my father from a friend of his who had just been made a judge—“I like my new occupation hugely. Whilst removing all strain and pressure, it gives the mind full play and exercise, and up to the present time it seems to suit body as well as mind.” Speaking of the necessity of going in procession in his robes, another one exclaims, “I often long to give a Whoop and cut a Caper in the midst of this Tomfoolery.”

Some of these letters to my father are very outspoken in their criticism of distinguished lawyers. Thus, 18 June 1876, “That ignoramus, the Attorney General, whose opinion I would not take on the title to an ant-heap....” Again, 20 December 1868, “Think of Collier being a judge. He was a capital caricaturist on circuit, and made his best speeches in cases of breach of promise et id genus. But beyond that....” My father’s own criticisms were much more restrained. He writes to my grandfather, 18 July 1850, “Yesterday morning I saw Wilde take his seat as Lord Chancellor. He looked rather confused: he cannot possibly know much about Equity, and how he is to get on I cannot understand.”

In 1920 the parish-clerk of Lustleigh was convicted of stamping an insurance-card with stamps that had been used on another insurance-card the year before. Notwithstanding his good character, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment; and this sentence was upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeal in London. The sentence was manifestly out of all proportion to the crime. The loss could not amount to more than 15s. 2d. on a card, even if all the stamps on it were used a second time; and, if nine months imprisonment is commensurate with 15s. 2d., I cannot conceive what punishments would be sufficient for big frauds of £50,000 or £100,000 that bring scores of families to destitution. The 15s. 2d. would be public money; and here was the Law fussing about a loss of shillings at a time when hundreds and thousands of pounds of public money were being obtained all round on the flimsiest of false pretences, the Law being satisfied if some incompetent official had been bamboozled into sanctioning the payment.

There is, of course, a theory that the punishment of crimes should be proportionate to the difficulty of their detection, the chances of immunity being counterbalanced by the risks of heavy punishment. But with these insurance-cards there is more difficulty in committing the crime than in detecting it. The cards are collected every half-year; and, if the collection is efficient, there are not any cards about from which old stamps can be detached. I suppose the Legislature understands the workings of the criminal mind, but I sometimes wonder whether men can be deterred from crime by dread of seven years penal servitude, if they are not deterred by dread of five. If they reckon things up at all, they probably pick out the biggest crime they can commit for any specified sentence—“may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”—and then act accordingly.

Fines would be far better than imprisonment in very many cases, that is, substantial fines with time allowed for payment by instalments. If this man had been fined £50, it would have helped the public revenue. As it was, the public had to maintain him for nine months and stopped his doing any useful work—and he was a hard-working and pains-taking man. Prisons are expensive things; and many of our prisons might be closed and a big revenue raised from fines, but for this silly craze for sending everyone to gaol.

I have a letter to my grandmother, 1 June 1843, from a nephew who had gone out to Australia and settled at Sydney. “Our county, Cumberland, in which Sydney is placed, will next month be the arena of a very spirited contest. We send two members, and there are four candidates, one of whom (the most monied man, a large distiller) tho’ now Free, was sent a Convict. We immigrants think it impudence of him to offer as a candidate, and the other party are as strong in his favour. I really think he will be elected, tho’ the Press teems with his crimes, the number of lashes received, and so on: his five associates were hanged. These people have an hatred to immigrants, and will not support them if they can deal with one of their own sort, and so frequently we see them get on much better than if they had come to the colony of their own free will.”

In spite of Convict competition this relative of mine did pretty well out there. In a letter to my father, 9 July 1874, he says that he has managed to put by £100,000 in the course of thirty years: all of it made by steady work, and none by speculation.

In his letter of 1 June 1843 he says, “The colony is labouring under temporary difficulties, but altogether it is advancing most rapidly: every downfall drives people to some fresh resources. Keeping sheep used to be almost the only employment: now that does not pay, agriculture is gaining ground, and instead of sending our coin to America for wheat, we grow our own. Altho’ sprung up like a mushroom in relation to the older towns of England, Sydney is as large as Exeter, its market buildings as good, its streets wider and the houses (that is, those recently built) as good as any: our George Street is fully two miles long, with all the bustle of Exeter Fore Street.”

Another first-cousin of my father’s went out to the colonies in very different style. He was a Chancery barrister in London, and was so cantankerous that they made him Attorney General of a colony in order to get rid of him, and then made him Chief Justice there to prevent his coming back—at any rate, that is what ill-natured people said. He had plenty of ability, but little experience in criminal law. He felt that pirates wanted hanging, and he hanged them; but I fear that he was technically wrong.