This sorry list, interspersed with cases of murder, of robbery with violence, and of smuggling, may doubtless be extended over the entire five years of Fielding's work on the Bench; and to reiterate the details of such work would be as tedious now as the monotonous discharge of these duties must once have been to the author of Tom [Jones]. [9] Of much more enduring interest is the great novelist's second line of attack on the problem confronting him.
For Henry Fielding's insight was far too profound for him to fail to strike at the root of individual crime, in those conditions which bred the criminal as surely as, to use his own favourite simile, unclean surroundings breed disease. And he had not been six months on the Bench before finding his first opportunity in a Charge delivered, as their Chairman, to the Westminster Grand Jury, on June 29, [1749]. [10] This "very loyal, learned, ingenious, excellent and useful" Charge was published "By Order of the Court, and at the unanimous Request of the Gentlemen of the Grand Jury"; and it is, Mr Austin Dobson tells us, "still regarded by lawyers as a model exposition." It is also a stirring appeal to the worthy jurors to discharge their duties as befitted men called upon to exercise one of the most ancient and honourable of English liberties: "Grand Juries, Gentlemen," declared their new Chairman, "are in Reality the only Censors of this Nation. As such, the Manners of the People are in your Hands, and in yours only. You, therefore, are the only Correctors of them.... To execute this Duty with Vigilance, you are obliged by the Duty you owe both to God and to your Country." Here is the same zeal, now directed to stimulating the conscience of the Westminster Jurors, which moved Captain Vinegar to lay about him so lustily on all the abuses within reach of his newspaper, and which inspired the 'father of the English Novel' with the admitted motive,--"I declare, that to recommend Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincere Endeavour in this History"--if not with the consummate art of his pages.
Fielding specially directs the energies of his jurors to the repression of open profligacy, the more as, through the 'egregious folly' of their parents, the Town had then become the 'seminaries of education' for youths of birth and station. And he bids them attend to those 'temples of iniquity' the masquerade rooms of the time, with a side glance at Foote's scandalous performances; to the gaming houses; to the prevalent vice of profane swearing, that "detestable Crime, so injurious to the Honour of God, so directly repugnant to His positive Commands, so highly offensive to the Ears of all good Men, and so very scandalous to the Nation in the Ears of Foreigners"; and to the libeller, a species of 'Vermin' whom "men ought to crush wherever they find him, without staying till he bite them." It is noteworthy also, that to the genius of Fielding, 'watching, brooding, creating,' the characteristic feature of his age seemed to be a "fury after licentious and luxurious pleasures." "Gentlemen," he cries, "our News-Papers, from the Top of the Page to the Bottom, the Corners of our Streets up to the very Eves of our Houses, present us with nothing but a View of Masquerades, Balls, and Assemblies of various Kinds, Fairs, Wells, Gardens, &c. tending to promote Idleness, Extravagance and Immorality, among all Sorts of People." Many of the public, he declares, make diversion "no longer the Recreation or Amusement, but the whole Business of their Lives"; and not content with three theatres they must have a fourth. What would he have said to a London in which not four but a hundred and twenty theatres draw nightly, and sometimes twice a day, their crowded audiences.
Two days after the delivery of this Charge (which the General Advertiser praises as "excellent and learned") a three days street riot broke out, which it fell to Fielding to subdue. On Saturday July 1 a mob had gathered in the Strand, about a disorderly house where a sailor was said to have been robbed. Beadle Nathaniel Munns, arriving on the scene, found the mob crying out "Pull down the house, pull down the house!"; and sent for the constables. Meanwhile the mob broke open the house and demolished and stripped the same; and throwing the goods out of the windows, set fire to them, causing such danger of a general conflagration that 'the parish engines' were sent for. A constable, not being able to find any magistrate in Town, went to Somerset House to procure assistance from the military, and on his returning with a corporal and twelve men, a force that later that night was increased to an officer and forty men, the mob was at last dispersed. On the next day, however, Sunday, they reassembled, and proceeded to demolish a second house, and to burn the goods thereof with an even larger fire than that of the preceding night. Mr Saunders Welch, High Constable for Holborn and, Fielding tells us, "one of the best Officers who was ever concerned in the Execution of Justice, and to whose Care, Integrity and Bravery the Public hath, to my Knowledge, the highest Obligations," passing through Fleet Street at the time, saw this second fire, and was told by the owner of another house that the mob threatened to come to him next. Upon which Mr Welch "well knowing the Impossibility of procuring any Magistrate at that Time who would act," went to the Tilt Yard and procured an officer and some forty men; and returning, found the third house in great part wrecked, the danger of fire here being aggravated by the extreme narrowness of the street on both sides and the fact that the premises of a bank were adjacent. This same Sunday night, also, the mob broke open the night-prison under Beadle Munns' house, rescuing two prisoners; and forced the Watch-house of the Liberty with stones and brick bats, to the imminent danger of the Beadle's life, as "sworn before me, Henry Fielding." Till three in the morning Mr Welch and the soldiers remained on duty, by which time the rioters had again dispersed. All this time Fielding, Mr Welch records, was out of town; but, by noon on Monday, the Justice was back in Bow Street: and, on being acquainted with the riot, immediately dispatched an order for a party of the Guards to bring the prisoners to his house, the streets being then full of a riotous crowd threatening danger of rescue. Fielding proceeded to examine the prisoners, a "vast mob" meanwhile being assembled in Bow Steet, and the streets adjacent. On information of the threatening aspect of the people he applied to the Secretary at War for a reinforcement of the Guards; and from his window, spoke to the mob, informing them of their danger, and exhorting them to disperse, but in vain. Rumours, moreover, came that four thousand sailors were assembling to march to the Strand that Monday night. In view of these rumours and of the riotous state of the streets, Fielding, the officer of the guard, and Mr Welch "sat up the whole night, while a large party of soldiers were kept ready under arms who with the peace officers patrolled the streets." And thanks to this vigorous action on the part of their new magistrate the citizens found peace restored within twelve hours of his return to town.
The same day as that on which Fielding was addressing the riotous mob from his Bow Street windows, and sitting up all night with the officer of a military guard, he found time to write to the Duke of Bedford on his own behalf and on that of his family, concerning the provision for which he betrays so constant an anxiety.
"Bow Street. July 3. 1749.
"My Lord,
"The Protection which I have been honoured with receiving at the Hands of your Grace, and the goodness which you were pleased to express some time toward me, embolden me to mention to your Grace that the Place of Solicitor to the Excise is now vacant by the Death of Mr Selwyn. I hope no Person is better qualified for it, and I assure you, my Lord, none shall execute it with more Fidelity. I am at this Moment busied in endeavouring to suppress a dangerous Riot, or I w'd. have personally waited on your Grace to solicite a Favour which will make me and my Family completely happy.
"I am, &c.,
"H. [Ffielding]." [11]