The Law and the Poor

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

With regard to orders for maintaining a separated wife, or affiliation orders, everyone would have less sympathy with the man who is sent to prison for not paying these. But if a man has not the money he does not make any in prison, and what these poor women want is regular weekly money.

These are special cases in which I think power to attach a man’s wages up to a certain percentage would be a just and reasonable proposition. Such a law might be unpopular with mankind, but it seems fair to the women. Whether it would tend to increase or decrease maintenance and bastardy orders I have not the least idea.

“Five shillings and costs or seven days.” This familiar phrase, as Count Smorltork says, “surprises by himself” the whole philosophy of police courts. Nothing is more marked in the treatment of rich and poor in the police court than the unfair incidence of fines. Take, for instance, the common case of a motor-car driver being fined forty shillings and costs for exceeding the speed limit and driving to the danger of mankind. If his master is a Cabinet Minister, say, he writes a civil letter to the clerk to the magistrates expressing his regret and enclosing the needful, which is just two five-thousandths of his official income.

But supposing he is a taxi-cab driver who owns his cab, or is buying it on the hire system, as many do. He, too, is fined forty shillings and costs, and as he earns, let us say, forty shillings a week, he has to pay one fifty-second of his income.

If he cannot raise the money his home is distrained on, or there is the option of imprisonment. That kind of option never worries the Cabinet Minister or the chauffeur thereof. In the old tithe days the parson took his tenth from rich and poor alike, and was no respecter of persons; all he wanted was one-tenth of your income in cash. As between Cabinet Minister and cabman the relation of fine should be as two pounds to ninepence—that is to say, if the law in the police courts desires to treat rich and poor alike.

There is no difficulty about doing this. All that is wanted is to enact in your statute that the fine should “not exceed one-fiftieth or one one-thousandth of a man’s income.” Then all would be fined off the same mark. At present the poor man is the scratch man, and the greater the wealth the longer the handicap.

As to costs, they should be wholly abolished. They are not only an odious tax on the poor, but they give the officials of the court an unholy incentive to make the court a paying concern, and, what is worse, give every clerk and officer in the police court a direct pecuniary interest in convictions. As things stand to-day a council of city men are not likely to advance salaries where their police court is losing money. A godly and righteous police court should glory in losing money year by year.

And whilst I recognise that at the head of each police court there should be a stipendiary to deal with the more important cases, and always to be within call when there are cases to try in which the local magistrates have a class interest, yet I have no desire to abolish Dogberry, nor do I take any pleasure in reading that he has written himself down an ass. In our chief cities there are now excellent stipendiaries and magistrates of all classes, including representatives of working men, and all can testify how—taking the police court system as it stands—it is worked fairly and carefully and to the advantage of all.

But these places are far ahead of the county towns and districts where the squire and parson reign supreme, and the clerk to the justices is their own faithful attorney. I believe thoroughly that these men do their best, but it is quite impossible that they can take a normal view of such horrible crimes as the rape of a pheasant’s egg or the snaring of a hare. It is from the beautiful little corners of the lovely English country that the bitter cry of injustice in the police courts makes itself heard from time to time in the public Press. Why should not every hamlet have its Village Plowden to brighten life on the country side?

There we see, let us hope, the last of a decaying and rotten system—justice administered by a class unlearned in law, and unlearned in a far more important branch of their business—the knowledge of the works and days and temptations of the fellow sinners whose judges they have elected themselves to be. In the remote country places more than anywhere is the stipendiary a necessity. Meanwhile, why should not direct representatives of the agricultural labourer be placed upon the bench if we are not to abolish Dogberry altogether?