86

RIOTOUS CITY APPRENTICES.

Ch. 14. rough treatment which they experienced in crowds, or from wanton outrage; but blood was seldom shed. Assassination, so common in the continental cities, was rare in London. The English rabble, indeed, are chiefly remarkable for mischief and cowardice. They destroy property, but they rarely attempt life. A file of soldiers will, at any time, disperse the most formidable crowd; and a few resolute individuals, armed with cudgels, can generally beat them off.

Turbulence of the People.

But riot and disorder were not confined to the lowest order of the populace. From the time of the Mohocks in Queen Anne's reign, to the end of the century, young men of fashion, inflamed with wine, would occasionally sally into the streets, beat the watch, insult everybody they met; and when the excitement was over, reel home with impunity. The city apprentices were a notoriously turbulent class. At one period, they went out in gangs every night, swept the streets from Temple Bar to Fleet Market, and beat any person who ventured to resist them. When such was the conduct of the upper and middle classes, it would have been difficult to restrain the licence of the lower orders. The excessive rigour, and savage penalties of the criminal law, were eminently calculated to brutalise the manners of the people. Every gaol delivery at the Old Bailey, furnished

a Place's evidence before the Commons' Committee on Education, 1835.

RIGOUR OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.

Ch. 14.

87

Public Exe

the populace at London with excitement of the
most odious and demoralising character. Con-
victs were drawn through the streets to the place cutions.
of execution in the Western suburb. But the
ignominious procession, so far from being an
appalling example, was more frequently a stimu-
lant to the depraved imagination of the specta-
tors. If the convict was a notorious highwayman,
or otherwise distinguished in crime, his tumbril,
drawn by four horses, decked with garlands
and ribbons, shewed like a triumphal car; while
surrounded by an admiring and applauding crowd,
the hero of the day, in full dress, and with a nose-
gay in his hand, was conveyed to the gallows.
The procession usually halted at a public-house in
St. Giles's, where the Tyburn party, including
the chaplain, took a farewell dram. These grand
exhibitions were varied by the minor diversions of
the pillory, and whipping at the cart's tail. The
secondary offences, from crimes too abominable to
name, down to libels and other breaches of the
law, which are now only technically criminal, were
constantly punished by the pillory; and in-
dividuals, without reference to the quality or
degree of their guilt, frequently lost their lives
from the indiscriminating ill-usage which they ex-
perienced at the hands of the populace. The dis-
gusting practice of tying wretches, of both sexes,
to a cart and dragging them through the streets,

This practice was prohibited about 1760, but the prohibition was only occasionally enforced.

1

88

PUBLIC FLOGGING.

Ch. 14. shrieking under the lash of the executioner, has been discontinued only within living memory. There were some offences of which the people themselves took cognizance, or with regard to which they seemed to exercise, at least, a concurrent jursdiction with the magistrates and courts of law. Pick-pockets taken in the fact, were usually dragged to the nearest pond or pump, and subjected to the discipline of cold water as long as they shewed signs of life. Young thieves, now the objects of the tenderest solicitude of the law, were usually well thrashed and sent about their business. The excessive rigour of the penal code defeated the object of punishment; juries were willing to prevaricate with their oaths rather than subject minor offenders to the terrible vengeance of the law; the judge even, assuming the character of counsel for the prisoner, would not suffer him to plead guilty, and in favorem vitae was ingenious to give effect to any quibble by which a just sentence might be evaded. Thus the improved chance of impunity gave a stimulus to crime; and the law in failing to adjust the scale of punishment, and to discriminate between degrees of guilt, had the effect of multiplying heinous offences.

Before this work is brought to a close, I shall review the progress of manners and of laws during the long reign of George the Third. I shall shew the beneficial effects of extended knowledge, of respect for religion, of humane and liberal legis

89

FAILURE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.

lation. England will appear a very different nation in 1819 to what she was in 1760, and the historian of later times will shew that the improvement in the arts of civilized life and of good government, has been far more rapid in the course of the last forty years, than during the period of which I have undertaken to give ac

count.

Ch. 14.

Ch. 15.

1771

Whig opposition dissolved.

AFTER an arduous struggle of ten years, the

King had at length prevailed over the Whig When Parliament assembled at the parties. commencement of 1771, the Opposition which had been concerted with so much pains, and assumed so formidable an appearance only a year before, was almost dissolved. The Bedford party had lost its chief, and its principal members were attached to the administration. The Grenville connection was dispersed. Lord Temple, after the death of his brother, retired from public life. Lord Suffolk, next to Temple in importance, took office in the Government. The Rockingham party hardly kept up the semblance of co-operation with Chatham and his friends; and instead of seeking to remove grounds of difference, the va