LAW AND ORDER
The English love to be ruled, just as eels are said to take delight
in being skinned. They hold that a nation which is properly ruled
cannot fail of happiness. Their notion of rule may be summed up in the
phrase, "Law and order." The Englishman believes that law and order are
heaven-sent blessings especially invented for his behoof. "Where else
in the world," he will ask you grandiloquently, "do you get such law
and such order as you get in England--the land of the free?" If anybody
picks his pocket, or encroaches upon his land, or infringes his patent
rights, or diverts his water-courses, the Englishman knows exactly
what to do. There is the law. They keep it on tap in great buildings
called courts, and persons in wigs serve out to you precisely what you
may deserve with great gusto and solemnity. The man picked your pocket,
did he? Three months' imprisonment for the man. Somebody is making
colourable imitations of your patent dolls' eyes. Well, you can apply
for an injunction. And so on.
This is law. All Englishmen believe in it, particularly those who have
never had any. When it comes to the worst, and the Englishman finds
that he really must take on a little of his own beautiful specific, he
usually begins by falling into something of a flutter. Those bewigged
and sedate persons seated in great chairs, with bouquets in front of
them and policemen to bawl "Silence!" for them, begin to have a new
meaning for the Englishman. Hitherto he has regarded them complacently
as the bodily representatives of the law in a free country. He has
smacked his lips over them, rejoiced in their learning, wit, and
acumen, warmed at the notion of their dignity, and thanked God that
he belonged to a free people--free England. Now, when it comes to
a trifling personal encounter before this mountain of dignity--this
mountain of dignity perched on a mountain of precedent, as it were--the
Englishman shivers and looks pale. But his solicitor and his counsel
and his counsel's clerk--particularly his counsel's clerk--soon put him
at his ease, and instead of withdrawing at the feel of the bath, he is
fain to plump right in. Whether he comes out on top or gets beaten is
another matter; in any case, the trouble about the thing is that, win
or lose, it is infinitely and appallingly costly. Law, the Englishman's
birthright, is not to be given away. If you want any, you must pay for
it, and pay for it handsomely, too. Otherwise you can go without. The
English adage to the effect that there is one law for the rich and
another for the poor is one of those adages which are very subtly true.
There is a law for the rich, certainly. There is also a law for the
poor--namely, no law at all. On the whole the Englishman who has not
had his pristine dream of English law shattered by contact with the
realities is to envied. All other Englishmen, whether their experience
has lain in County Courts, High Courts, or Courts of Appeal, talk
lovingly of English law with their tongues in their cheeks.
With respect to order, the much bepraised handmaiden of law, I do not
think that the English get half so much of her as they think they
do. She costs them a pretty penny. The up-keep of her police and
magistrates and general myrmidons runs the Englishman into some noble
taxation; yet where shall you find an English community that is orderly
if even an infinitesimal section of it has made up its mind to be
otherwise? In London at the present moment there are whole districts
which it is not safe for a decently dressed person to traverse
even in broad daylight; and these districts are not by any means
slum districts, but parts of the metropolis in which lie important
arteries of traffic. There is not a square mile of the metropolitan
area which does not boast its organised gang of daylight robbers,
purse-snatchers, watch-snatchers, and bullies who would beat a man
insensible for fourpence, and whose great weapon is the belt.
For convenience' sake these people have been grouped together under
the term "Hooligan." The police--the far-famed London police--can
do nothing with them. They admit that they are ineradicable and
irrepressible. The magistrates and the newspapers keep on asseverating
that "something must be done." That something apparently consists
in the capture of a stray specimen of the tribe, who is forthwith
given three months, with perhaps a little whipping thrown in. But
hooliganism is a business that continues to flourish like the green
bay-tree, and London is no safer to-day than it was in the time of
the garotters. As the belt is the weapon of the London robber, and as
Hooligan is his name, so we find in all the larger provincial towns
gangs of scoundrels with special instruments and slang names of their
own. In Lancashire and the Black Country kicking appears to be the
favourite method of dealing with the order-loving citizen. In some of
the northern towns the knuckle-duster, the sand-bag, and the loaded
stick are requisitioned; and in all cases we are told the police are
powerless. The fact is, that, on the whole, England cannot be reckoned
an orderly country. The "hooligans" and their provincial imitators are
just straws that show the way of the wind. When these persons say: "We
will do such and such things in contravention of the law," there is
practically nothing to stop them. In the same way, when a community
determines to run amuck on an occasion of "national rejoicing" (such
as the late Mafeking night), or because a strike is in progress, or a
charity dinner has been badly served, or the vaccination laws are being
enforced, it does so at its own sweet will, and order can be hanged.
Once a week, too,--namely, on Saturday nights,--English order, like
the free list at the theatres, is entirely suspended. Saturday night
is the recognised and inviolable hour of the mob. Throughout the
country your flaring English gin-palaces are at their flaringest; the
beer-pumps sing together with a myriad voices, and the clink of glasses
takes the evening air with beauty. Until, perhaps, eight o'clock all
goes well; then the quarrelsomeness which the English masses extract
from their cups begins to assert itself, and the chuckers-out (in what
other country in the world are there chuckers-out?) and the police
begin to be busy. Till long after midnight their hands are full, and
it is not until the Sabbath is a couple of hours old that the English
masses seek their rest. In the meantime what squalid indiscretions,
what sins against humanity, what outrages, have not been committed? The
bare consumption of drink alone has been appalling; the bickerings,
angry shoutings, indulgences in pugilism and hair-pulling, have been
infinite; and on Monday morning the police-courts will have their usual
plethora of drunks and disorderlies, wife-beatings and assaults on the
police, with, perhaps, a case or two of manslaughter and a murder to
put the crown on things.
In the main, therefore, law and order may be counted among John Bull's
many illusions. They are, as one might say, sweet to meditate upon;
they look all right on paper, and they sound all right in the mouths
of orators. For the rest the Englishman who is wise smiles and keeps a
folded tale. One may note, before leaving this entertaining subject,
that in England lawyers and laymen alike take a special pride in
admitting a certain ignorance. At the bare mention of Scots law they
lift up pious hands and impious eyes and say, "Thank Heaven, we know
nothing about it!"