him to be perfectly frank with the people, and among other devices for keeping a clear conscience, to preach the sermons of others, openly announcing that they are not his own and that he has not made up his mind about the truth of Christianity; but that he is, like many others who are nominally Christians, only a learner or inquirer.

This state of things lasts for some time, and the story ends in a manner which might be described as equivocal. Wingfold delivers a discourse-or might we call it a manifesto?-in which he declares to the people that though he is no more free from doubt than other people, he has made up his mind that Christianity is the best thing under heaven; that there is no such path to the true knowledge of God and the loving service of man as the reading of the Gospels has disclosed to him; and that thus all the belief in his power gathers itself up hopefully around the life and teaching recorded in those books.

Bascombe, as may be expected, denounces Wingfold as a hypocrite. But, though it would not be difficult to maintain that Wingfold ought to have sent round the crier with the bell at the time when that expedient occurred to him as the only safe thing for his conscience,- —or at least ought to have withdrawn at once from his post as a teacher of religion-it is equally difficult to call him a hypocrite. And is not his case typical?

It will be observed-to go back now to the sentences which are italicized—that Wingfold had what he calls "a prejudice in favour of Christianity;" and he, in fact, ends with such a prejudice, only it is now very greatly strengthened. Of course, an orthodox Christian is likely to hold himself shut up to the duty of having such a prejudice, by the words, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." Equally of course, George Bascombe would maintain that these words coustitute a charter of persecution, or at least furnish an excuse for it; because they seem to trace back unbelief to some final spring of moral obliquity or imperfect obedience.

But the main point to be observed is, that in the case of Wingfold the logically prior question of the truth of the records does not play any great part, or perhaps any part at all in the case. If his position is good for anything-for his own purposes we mean-it must amount to this:-Without a certain primary faith and hope, duty collapses, and all questions of right and wrong become idle. That faith and hope, and this secondary one, I find so much of kin that I cannot separate them. If, therefore, it should even prove that the second as it stands is not true, I should still have to say-then something equivalent must be true. In that case, the matters which I now hold as facts would for me pass into the region of symbol; and if my faith and hope are sound, their equivalents would stand disclosed to me.

But we feel Wingfold might continue-how would it still stand with thousands of others; with hundreds of the congregation to begin with? What am I to do with "yon cottager who weaves at her own door?"

It is a question which few men brought up in the Christian tradition can nowadays escape, unless they shirk their plain duty to the poor and ignorant.

Arthur Dimmesdale knew very well that if he had only whispered in the ear of the old dame whom he met the blasphemy that occurred to him, she would have dropped down dead in the street. George Bascombe would hardly walk into the chamber of death, and talk nihilism while some one was reading, "I am the resurrection and the life," to the weeping friends. Now, almost every day, we find similar difficulties arise in practice. It is the case of Spinoza and his landlady over again, or a much harder case. With half the people we meet, it is Christianity or nihility. George Bascombe may say, "The sooner a superstition is out of the way the better; we must just take our chance, and tell the truth." But, from lips such as his, the words have a sinister sound. And it must be borne in mind, that what Wingfold says, or means to say, is this:-For the faith which I hold, in its essentials, no equivalent is possible-I cannot treat the possibility as an open question.

Now so long as the case can be put thus, and yet the charge of hypocrisy cannot be made good against men like Wingfold (though his moral policy was feeble and blameworthy), but falls back blunted, it may surely be said that when we have condemned to the very utmost all time-serving, whether for money or social position, and all hushing-up of felt difficulties, the question how to deal with the outworks of belief in ignorant, simple-hearted believers, is one which might well give the boldest unbeliever pause, and must be a pathetically anxious one for him who unwillingly doubts. We do not for a moment suggest or suppose that men like Professor Clifford would attack "yon cottager." But then, may not those who believe some things which Professor Clifford does not, rightly hesitate to attack the curate who goes to read with the cottager? The curate's faith is worth little if it will not help him to be a true man, true in full confidence that the Maker and Manager of this world can take care of the beliefs of the creatures in it. So he is bound to inquire; he is bound to profess no belief that he does not share; he is bound especially to be on his guard against all attempts to work up a factitious belief because it pays or is pleasant; but he is also entitled to say to the agnostic: The particular inquiry to which you invite me is one which I cannot, without self-stultification, include under any conception of duty.

MR

THE PRINCIPLES OF PUNISHMENT.

R. SERJEANT COX has just published an octavo volume of about 200 pages with the above title.* Its pretensions are of the most moderate kind, and it would be a mistake to treat it as if it did more than open for discussion a very large and difficult subject, the difficulties of which are plainly felt by the author himself. It is surprising, or melancholy, or at least not encouraging, to note how many pages you may read upon a subject like this, and how much anxious and careful thought you may expend upon it, and yet make but very little way either for your own guidance or that of others. Though our laws may want codifying, they cannot be called bad ones, and, on the whole, they are not wanting in flexibility. We have admirable and laborious judges, who take it for a poor compliment if you call them incorruptible. An innocent person is very rarely convicted. And yet nobody can deny the inequalities of punishment which set the learned Serjeant upon writing this book. It appears to have been found that the sentences for small offences tried at Quarter Sessions exceed in severity those for greater offences tried at Assizes! At all events, that was the result of an average struck some years ago. While we are writing, we happen to take up the report of two cases tried at Maidstone before Mr. Justice Brett, a judge who leans to severity rather than to the contrary. Two lads, aged seventeen and eighteen respectively, were tried for highway robbery, with violence, and for a further assault of a horrible kind upon one of the persons attacked-an old woman of sixty-eight! The prisoners were not tried upon a second indictment, though one of them impudently invited trial. Mr. Justice Brett observed that he saw no object in proceeding with the second indictment, and that it would only have this effect, that he could then order both prisoners to be flogged in addition to "the terrible sentence" of fifteen years' penal servitude which would now be passed upon them. "The prisoners left the dock laughing."

Immediately after this a school-mistress, aged thirty-six, was tried for the manslaughter of her husband. She was a most passionate woman: upon an angry dispute at dinner she flung at her husband a knife, which simply cut his throat and killed him. Her remorse had been extreme, as well it might be. Mr. Justice Brett, remarking very truly that she had narrowly escaped being tried for murder, sentenced her

*Law Times Office.

to ten years' penal servitude. in an insensible condition."

"The prisoner fainted, and was carried out of the dock

We do not affirm that this sentence was unduly severe; but it certainly seems as if it had rather been suggested by the fact that the wretched woman had narrowly escaped hanging than by the gravity of her crime. It may safely be assumed that she had no intention to harm her husband: the act of flinging the knife -which was committed in the presence of a third person, a visitor-was perhaps half-hysterical. At all events, the punishment will fall heavily; and if the object of State punishment for crime be, as Mr. Serjeant Cox maintains, to deter others, we may well ask whether there is any probability that this sentence will have much deterrent effect. How many educated women are at this moment likely to come under any temptation to fling knives at their husbands? And of the whole number, how many will see the report of this case? A severe sentence in such a case as this is not like a severe sentence passed upon, say, a surgeon or a commercial traveller; for in instances like the latter the whole of a class of persons will probably know of an exemplary punishment inflicted upon any one of their class. We are safe in saying that there are judges on the bench who would have inflicted a sentence not one fifth as severe as the one in question.

Turning to the case of those two young "braves," of the devil's regiment of the line, we do not find our difficulties diminish; though certainly Mr. Justice Brett did not deal too severely with them. It is rather sickening to reflect that those nice young fellows-in all probability irretrievably bad-will have to be fed and dressed and housed at our expense for fifteen years. Does it not require considerable selfcontrol to refrain from the suggestion that the best thing that could happen to two powerful young brutes who could half-kill an old man and woman, and in addition behave like "the Ottomites" to the latter, aged sixty-eight, would be to hang or shoot them out of hand? There is, or was, or was said to be, a tradition that a peculiar blue flower grew out of convicts' graves. It would not be easy to fancy any flower growing out of the graves of these young brutes, if they were put out of sight. But why did not Mr. Justice Brett try the second indictment, when he could have ordered a flogging under it? We express no opinion in favour of flogging, or, for that matter, of hanging either; all this comment is hypothetical; but if flogging is a good thing, these "laughing" ruffians were surely proper subjects for it.

It is no reflection upon any particular judge to say that the "principles," to use Serjeant Cox's word, upon which they interfere to direct or qualify the action of law are too often quite obscure to the lay mind. The strongest case in point that occurs to us is that of the man Toomer, which occurred while Mr. Walpole was Home Secretary. There is a crime as to which Mr. Serjeant Cox quotes the late Baron Platt as laying it down (after very large experience in such cases) that it never was committed. This dictum was not intended to be quite absolute; but the opinion of that acute judge and man of the world-an opinion shared by Serjeant Cox-was that in the incalculably larger number of cases, there was some degree of consent on the part of the victim. Toomer was tried for this crime, and found guilty upon evidence of the most preposterously flimsy character-such as a sane man would not whip a dog upon. Mr. Justice Shee quietly sentenced him to (we believe we are correct) fifteen years' penal servitude.

Nobody likes to meddle with pitch, and there was a short spell of silence. But this was followed by such an outcry, that at last Mr. Walpole ordered the release of Toomer after he had been in prison about six months. As far as we can recollect, no explanation was ever given of the reasons which kept Mr. Justice Shee from such interference in this case as was within his competence.

Unless we are mistaken (which is possible enough), it is in the power of a judge, at his own risk, to refuse to accept a verdict, and to order a fresh jury. At all events a judge has some power, and we occasionally see it exercised in extreme

Mr.

cases. But, while we suffer from the stupidity of juries, it must be admitted that we suffer also from the idiosyncrasies of the judges. They have all their theories and prejudices, and we can distinctly trace them in the sentences they pass. Serjeant Cox rightly objects to a "sentimental" judge; he might also object, and no doubt he does, to a moralizing judge. It would be only too easy to mention cases of late years, in which moralizing judges have shown by their addresses to the prisoners at the bar, and the strange severity of their sentences, that they thought of themselves rather as instruments of Divine reprobation than as administrators of the law. A flagrant case occurred lately in which a living judge, in passing a severe sentence, lectured the prisoner on his wicked abuse of one of the rites of the Church. If any student of these matters is anxious to see how the varied idiosyncrasies of the judges work, he will find what he desires in the cases tried for manslaughter and the trials for bigamy. A man who commits bigamy is just as great a criminal if he was married at the registrar's as if he was married at his parish church. A judge has not the slightest business to lecture him, much less to punish him, for sacrilege in the one case any more than in the other.

Mr. Serjeant Cox would be the last man to hope too much from such a volume as he has prepared. It was not a very pleasant task, and though he has fulfilled it with thoughtfulness and moderation, he must know that a good many stones will be thrown at him. Especially we fear he will get scolded as if he had attempted what he disclaims. Upon the general theory of punishment he does not pretend to say anything new. For his purpose he classifies crimes under these heads :

I. Crimes of Wantonness;

II. Occasional Crimes;

III. Crimes involving Breach of Trust;

IV. Crimes of Fraud;

V. Crimes of Passion;

VI. Crimes of Violence;

VII. Crimes of Cruelty and Brutality;

VIII. Prevalent Crimes.

And though he has nothing very original to say about the "principles of punishment" (how should he have?) he makes a great many sensible comments, and tells a few instructive stories. The opponents of the lash will complain that he has taken for granted that the decay of garotting is due to the terrors of the cat. They will say, not proven. And he will not escape without contradiction on other points. But everybody will agree with him upon the duty of leniency to first offences; and will read with emotion the following little history from his own experience :

"A man had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for larceny. As he was leaving the dock, a person spoke to him from the floor of the court, and he broke into a flood of tears. Seeing this, I called him back and inquired what it was that had so grieved him.- Oh, my Lord!' he said, 'I am told that my poor wife died in childbed last night from sorrow for me, and I was not there to close her eyes.' At once I resolved to trust him. If you will give me your word that you will come here on the first day of next sessions to receive your punishment, you shall go and bury your wife.' Those about me were sure I should never see him again. I put you upon your honour,' I repeated; 'I trust you.' The promise was given. With an expression of extreme gratitude he left the court. At the next sessions great curiosity was felt as to the result of so uncommon, and, as some thought, so unjustifiable, an experiment. But when the court met, the convict appeared as he had promised, in mourning, saying, 'I am come as I promised, to take my sentence.' After a moment's reflection, I said, "You have behaved well, and so well that I shall not inflict upon you the sentence I had intended. In the hope that you will repent the past, and be honest for the future, I will give you a chance to retrieve the character you have lost. You shall go on

your own recognizances to come up for judgment when called on.' I have been informed that he has profited by the lesson, and has since preserved an excellent character for honesty and industry."

One topic Serjeant Cox has not dwelt upon. But surely judges and jurors are too often influenced by what is in the air, not to say by what is in the newspapers. Cruelty to animals" is a grave offence; but there is something so ludicrous, as well as painful, about the fashion of severity in dealing with it, which has set in lately, that if we did not know by experience how these fashions in punishment pass away after a time, we might with reason begin to inquire on what proportionate scale we might soon see cruelty to human beings punished.

"H

FROM 1851 TO 1875.

ISTORY and News, necessary as they are to one another, have never pulled together or been very fast friends. News belongs to that indefinable Present which has no real existence, but is only the ever-advancing line between all that has been and all that is to be. History lags behind, tries to choose its pace, to select and order its materials, and to dominate over the silent, still, and unresisting realm of the once mighty Past. Many attempts have been made, and are made, but it yet remains a universal complaint, whether in the school or in the study, that while it is more or less possible to master any former period of the world's progress, there is nothing to call a history of the period comprised in a man's own life and experience. He cannot compare his own recollections, or his own comments, with those of any author who has made it his business to survey human affairs and to sum up their manifold lessons from time to time till the very present hour. What we have attempted now for a long time, in the form of an Annual Summary of the Events of the Past Year, is the nearest approach to a history immediately evolved from the news of the day-that.is, from their publication and discussion-that has yet been made. When one takes into account the difficulties under which even an Annual Summary must be done, we must conclude it hardly possible to strike the balance of human affairs at shorter intervals. The comprehensive survey and solemn attitude of the historic Muse become ridiculous when applied to the smaller fragments of time. A series of Annual Summaries ought to leave no interval and let no topic slip through. It ought to be a history, for even History itself does not disdain to observe the alternations of activity and repose, anticipation and retrospection, that in public, as in most private affairs, go along with the seasons of the natural year. In the form then of the Summaries presented to the readers of The Times on the last day of the year, these pages are a history of the last twentyfive years the third quarter of the nineteenth century."

These are the words, somewhat abbreviated, with which the preface to "The Times Summaries for a Quarter of a Century opens. They express a felt want,

but it is a want that can never be satisfied in the form which it thus takes. Excellent are these Annual Summaries: but they are news warmed up in a concentrated form, not history: nor can they be. They will be fine material for the historian; but the difference between history and an "old almanack" is one that can never be bridged over.

Even considered as material for history, this concentrated réchauffé of news is not all the historian wants. It is the duty of the annalist, no less than of the journalist -perhaps it is more his duty-to be as impartial as he can be consistently with truth. No doubt, too, that is also a part of the duty of the historian. But when events are near at hand, when it is with the yesterday which stirred our pulses that we have to deal, can we attain to any but a strained and, so to speak, partial, impartiality? It is doubtful. Does the historian require for his purpose the com