Son and Heir. "How many of us are there? Why, if you Count the Girls, there are Six—but some people don't Count the Girls.—I'm One."
THE CABMAN AND HIS GOOD AND EVIL REPORT.
The Reporter of the celebrated Bow Street Cab Case has written to the Times and to us (our letter is sealed with the official seal of the Court) to contradict the contradiction which was given in the House of Commons to his report of the case of Phillips the cabman, who would not or could not put down five shillings for measuring the distance of a fare with respect to which he was charged with an overcharge.
The Reporter appeals to our sense of justice—a tribunal to which nobody ever appealed in vain; but we cannot see that any injustice has been done, and therefore the appeal can only meet with a dismissal. The Reporter and the Magistrate are at issue in their statements of what took place, but the former's contradiction of the latter had not been published when our article was at press; and, had it been, we certainly see no reason why we should believe one party to the discredit of the other. That reporters are fallible we know by the frequency with which their inaccuracies are corrected; and we fear the Reporter in question is capable of making a mistake, for he informs us that "years ago" his "Bow Street reports led to the dismissal of a very incompetent magistrate" (which may be possible), "and to the appointment of Mr. Henry as his successor," which is utterly incredible. We need not waste words in pointing out the absurdity of the assumption that the report of what was being done by a magistrate at one court, could in the smallest degree conduce to the appointment of any other magistrate, though the publicity given to any improper acts of the former might lead to his dismissal.
In conclusion, we have only to say that the Magistrate gives one version of the affair, and the Reporter gives another. Neither magistrates nor reporters are infallible, and we must therefore leave the public to decide for themselves which of the two has, on this occasion, been accurate. The Reporter lays some stress—and with some show of reason—on the alleged fact, that his statement of the case is supported by a note in the minute-book kept by the clerk, and pried into, as it seems, rather unceremoniously by the Reporter; but if a magistrate is liable to err, it is possible that his clerk may be capable of error. Having performed an act of justice, by recording the protest of the Reporter against the impeachment of his accuracy, which we noticed last week, we have done with the subject.
A learned Assistant Judge, while trying a boy for stealing a pudding, summed up thus:—"Here's the pudding; up pops the boy, off goes the pudding, and after him goes the policeman. You've got the boy, the pudding, and the policeman before you, and now, Gentlemen of the Jury, consider your verdict." In like manner, we say to the public, "You have got the report, the Reporter, and the Magistrate before you; therefore, Gentlemen of England, consider your verdict."
BAD BEER WITH A GOOD NAME.
From the report of a recent case in the Rolls Court, it appears that some rogues have been putting damaged Prestonpans Ale into bottles labelled with the names of Messrs. Bass and Messrs. Allsopp, and selling the stuff under these false titles "at fairs and races." We suspect that this trick is too common. You meet, occasionally, with beer thus labelled, by which, no doubt, those firms are libelled; for it is a libel on respectable brewers to impute bad beer to them: and the sort of bitter beer we allude to is bitter bad. We call it beer, indeed; but we no more believe that it is made of malt and hops than that it is brewed by Allsopp or by Bass, whose names appear on the bottles it is sold in, but, to give a correct idea of their contents, ought to be altered to Base and Allslop.