What, then, do we wish to impress upon our readers?—what do we seek to impress upon the Legislature and the Government? That it is better to adopt means to prevent crime, than to study how to punish it when it is committed. We have a thousand laws which proclaim how a man may be sent to the treadmill, or to the bulks, or to the penal colonies, or to the gibbet: but we have none devising measures to keep him away from those places. Everything is to punish—nothing to prevent. The codes are crowded with enactments inflicting penalties upon grown-up criminals,—but do not contain a single statute for the protection of the children of the poor against contamination. Look at those emaciated little beings rolling about all day long in the gutters, or eating the offal off dust-heaps: does the law stretch forth its hand and pluck them out of that filth which is only too painfully emblematical of the moral mire in which their minds are likewise wallowing? No: the law allows them to play on unheeded; but when, a few years afterwards, these unhappy creatures, who can neither read nor write, and have no idea of God nor hope nor heaven, pilfer a slice of rusty bacon or a morsel of cheese from a shop-board in order to satisfy the cravings of hunger—then does the Law thrust forth its long arm and its great hand, and seize upon the victims of——what?—its own neglect!
Yes: those are truths which we are never wearied of insisting upon. Session after session is frittered away in party squabbles; but what remedial steps are taken to moralise, christianise, and civilise the children of the poor?
CHAPTER CCIX.
MR. GREEN’S MISSION.
In the meantime Mr. Green had taken a cab, and ordered himself to be driven to the mansion of the Earl of Ellingham in Pall Mall.
While he was proceeding thither, he threw himself back in the vehicle and gave way to a variety of pleasurable reflections. He considered his prospects to be most brilliant; and he believed that he was on the high road to amass as considerable a fortune as that which his late master Heathcote had once enjoyed. It was fortunate for him that he had applied to Jack Rily in the hour of his need: the Doctor had proved of the greatest assistance to him;—and he resolved to run down to Woolwich some day and call upon his old friend at the hulks. For Jack Rily had been tried for the murder of Vitriol Bob, and acquitted of the capital charge: but he was condemned to two years’ imprisonment in a convict-ship for manslaughter, the police having appeared to give him a character which by no means recommended him to the good opinion of the jury nor the mercy of the Court. As for the immense quantity of Bank-notes found upon his person at the time of his arrest, he had positively refused to give any satisfactory account concerning them; and as no one stood forward to claim them, nor to throw any light upon this mysterious subject, they were declared to be forfeited to the Crown on the prisoner’s conviction for manslaughter.
Pondering upon these and other matters, Mr. Green arrived in due course at the noble mansion in Pall Mall; and on inquiring for Mr. Hatfield, he was informed that this gentleman was ill in bed.
“But my business is of the most urgent character,” said the attorney; “and I must see him.”
The domestic to whom this assurance was given, conducted Mr. Green into a parlour, and hastened to report to the Earl of Ellingham the presence of the visitor.
The nobleman accordingly repaired to the room in which Green was waiting, and represented to him that Mr. Hatfield was too much indisposed to receive any stranger.