After a good deal of trouble I obtained from him the reason of his reticence.
“You see,” he said, “Moses (the plaintiff) is mine brother-in-law, and little Isaac (the defendant) he is mine vife’s nephew, and if I speak about this case, vy, I must give vun of them avay.”
I condoled with him about his family difficulties, and tried to persuade him that his duty was to speak the truth, but my only recollection of his evidence is that it was of no service to anyone, and that he certainly succeeded in giving himself away.
In a family dispute the greatest care must be taken to accept nothing as true that can possibly be prompted by hatred or malice. To do justice to the Jews they do not, as a rule, bring family disputes into court. A cynical registrar once told me that a Jew would swear anything for his brother, and a Christian anything against his brother. Without endorsing this epigrammatic exaggeration, I must sorrowfully admit that a downright North Country fight between blood relations over club money or the cost of a funeral tea or the furniture of a deceased parent is one of the saddest exhibitions of uncharitableness that I know.
The recklessness with which good ladies of unblemished character will commit what technical-minded lawyers might be inclined to consider perjury, and on occasion even stoop to something like forgery, would surprise anyone who was not conversant with it. In ordinary matters these good people are honest citizens enough, but in a family dispute honour requires that no iniquity must be left undone in order to gain the day. I remember in my early days a fat old dame of cheerful countenance suing her son-in-law, a young workman, for £2 17s. 9d. The odd shillings and pence were admitted, but the £2, which figured through two or three greasy books as “ballanse of account,” could not be traced to any particular source.
The old lady swore it was a grocery account. The young man denied it with emphasis, and said it was spite. Sarah, the old lady’s elder daughter, remembered some of the items of it, and with a great relish swore to them in detail. The young wife, who had been keeping a very lively baby quiet, and trying in between whiles to give evidence from the body of the court, at last got into the witness-box. Flinging the baby into her husband’s arms, and kissing the book with a smack, she shot out the following testimony at her mother and myself: “Look ’ere, mother, you know reet enow what that there balance is; it ain’t no balance at all—it’s my ’at and the wedding-dress, and the shoes to match, and the pair o’ greys what druv us to church, which I paid for when I was in service for three years, putting by ’arf-a-crown a month, which mother kep’ for me, and well she knows it, which it’s Sarah’s spite as ain’t got married yet.”
What was the real truth may be doubtful, but I was clear the “ballanse of account” was not groceries, and struck it out; yet, had the mother succeeded, she would have pursued her son-in-law to prison in an endeavour to collect the money.
For my part I think it is bad business for the community that homes should be broken up in order that a creditor may collect a trumpery debt that should never have been incurred, and it is because I believe it is the interest of the State to keep together the home of the working-man, and to deliver him from temptation, that I hope to see imprisonment for debt diminished, if not abolished altogether. An intelligent landlord wishing to preserve game kills off birds of prey and puts down poachers. An intelligent State, if it wishes to preserve the home of the working-man and his wife and children, should make it illegal for him to mortgage his future earnings, and to place his liberty in jeopardy in order to possess for the moment some shoddy piece of jewellery or drapery for which he has no real use.