FIELDING AND LEGISLATION
"The Subject, as well as the Child, should be left without excuse
before he is punished: for, in that case alone, the Rod becomes
the Hand either of the Parent or the Magistrate."
_Inquiry Into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers_.
There is no Bill for the suppression of street robberies on the Statute
Book for 1749 or 1750; so the draft which Fielding, with characteristic
energy, despatched to the Lord Chancellor but a few months after his
appointment to the Bench, was, presumably, pigeon-holed. Meanwhile, the
criminal conditions of the metropolis seem to have become, if anything,
more scandalous. In February 1750, the _Penny Post_ reports the gaols in
and about London to be "now so full of Felons and desperate Rogues that
the Keepers have not fetters enow to put upon them; so that in some
Prisons two or three are chained together to prevent their escape." And on
the fifth of the same month the _General Advertiser_ hears that "near 40
Highwaymen, street Robbers, Burglars, Rogues, Vagabonds, and Cheats have
been committed within a week last past by Justice Fielding." But however
full of business the Bow Street court-room might be, that dreary routine
[1] would make, as we have said, but equally dreary reading. And the fact
that both John and Henry Fielding appear to have been known as 'Justice
Fielding' during the lifetime of the latter, lessens whatever biographical
value might be extracted from the constant newspaper paragraphs recording
the Fielding cases. It is clear that the house in Bow Street was the
centre of an active campaign against the thieves, murderers, professional
gamblers, and highwaymen, who were then so rife. Military guards conducted
thither prisoners, brought for examination from Newgate, for fear of
rescue from gangs lurking in the neighbouring streets. All "Persons who
have been robbed" and their servants, were desired, by public
advertisement, to attend Justice Fielding "at his House in Bow Street," to
identify certain prisoners under examination. And thither came the
"porters and beggars," the composing of whose quarrels Henry Fielding
himself has told us, occupied his days. The generous spirit in which he
treated such poor clients, and his tenderness for those driven by want
into crime, are eminently characteristic of the man. By adjusting, instead
of inflaming, these squalid quarrels, and by "refusing to take a shilling
from a man who must undoubtedly would not have had another left," he
reduced a supposed income of £500 a year to £300. And if the picture of
the poor wretch, driven to highway robbery by the sight of his starving
family, whom Tom Jones relieved from his own scanty purse, be not proof
enough of the compassion that tempered Justice Fielding's sternness, we
have his own express pleading for these unhappy victims of circumstance:
"what can be more shocking," he cries, "than to see an industrious poor
Creature, who is able and willing to labour forced by mere want into
Dishonesty, and that in a Nation of such Trade and Opulence." So justly
could Fielding apportion the contributary negligence of society towards
the criminals bred by its apathy.
And it was not only the impoverished porter who found help at Bow Street.
"When," says Murphy, "in the latter end of [Mr Fielding's] days he had an
income of four or five hundred a-year, he knew no use of money but to keep
his table open to those who had been his friends when young, and had
impaired their own fortunes." As Mr Austin Dobson says, in commenting on
one of Horace Walpole's scurrilous letters, [2] "it must always have been
a more or less ragged regiment which met about that kindly Bow Street
board." The man who parted with his own hardly won arrears of rent to
relieve the yet greater need of a College friend, was little likely to be
less generous when the tardy 'jade Fortune' at last put some secured
income into his hands.
No special event marks the spring and summer of 1750. On the 11th of
January the Westminster General Quarter Sessions opened, and on the
following day Fielding was again elected as chairman "for the two next
Quarter Sessions"; which election was repeated, "for the two next
Sessions, [3]" in July. The Registers of St Paul's Covent Garden record
the baptism of a daughter, Sophia, on the 21st of January. And an
indication that the zealous magistrate was plunged, personally, into some
of the tumults of the time occurs in the following trifling note to the
Duke of Bedford.
"My Lord,
"In obedience to the Commands I have the Honour to receive from your
Grace, I shall attend tomorrow morning and do the utmost in my Power to
preserve the Peace on that occasion.
"I am, with gratitude and Respect,
"My Lord,
"Your Grace's most obliged
"most obedient humble servant.
"Henry Ffielding. [4]
"Bow Street,
"May 14, 1750."
By the autumn, however, a rumour was abroad that the now famous author of
_Tom Jones_ was engaged on pages of a very different nature. The _General
Advertiser_, for October 9, announces:--
"We hear that an eminent Magistrate is now employed in preparing a
Pamphlet for the Press in which the several causes that have conspired to
render Robberies so frequent of late will be laid open; the Defects of our
Laws enquired into, and Methods proposed which may discourage and in a
great measure prevent this growing Evil for the future."
This pamphlet, in which many a later reform was urged by Fielding's
far-sighted zeal, seems to have been still in preparation for the next two
months. And in November the reform of the law had to give place to a more
immediate urgency in protecting the Lord Chancellor. The keepers of three
gaming houses, closed by his lordship's orders, were reported to be
plotting against that exalted dignitary; and the case, as appears from the
following letter to a lawyer, Mr Perkins, was in Fielding's hands. [5]
"Sir
"I have made full enquiry after the three Persons and have a perfect
account of them all. Their characters are such that perhaps three more
likely Men could not be found in the Kingdom for the Hellish Purpose
mentioned in the Letter. As the Particulars are many and the Affair of
such Importance I beg to see you punctually at six this evening when I
will be alone to receive you--and am, Sir,
"Yr. most obed;
"humble servant
"He Ffielding.
"Bow Street. Nov. 25. 1750."
When the keepers of gambling houses dared to fly at such high game as the
person of the Lord Chancellor, there is no wonder that the safety of his
Majesty's ordinary lieges was of small account. "Robbery," writes Horace
Walpole, a few weeks before the date of the above letter, "is the only
thing which goes on with any vivacity." And at the close of the year a
Royal Proclamation was actually published, promising £100 over and above
other rewards, and a free pardon, to any accomplice who should apprehend
offenders committing murder, or robbery by violence, in London streets or
within five miles of London, providing such an accomplice had not himself
dealt a mortal wound. So startling a confession of impotence on the part
of the Government served very fitly to introduce the pamphlet, then on the
eve of publication. And if further proof be needed of the conditions of
public safety at the beginning of the year 1751, it may be seen in the
passage of the King's Speech delivered at the opening of Parliament on the
17th of January, in which his Majesty exhorted the Commons to suppress
outrages and violences on life and property; words representing, of
course, the policy of the Ministry.
The title of Fielding's little book, dedicated to Lord Hardwick, and
published about January 22, is _An Enquiry into the Causes of the late
Increase of Robbers &c. with some Proposals for remedying this growing
Evil. In which the Present Reigning Vices are impartially exposed; and the
Laws that relate to the Provision for the Poor and to the Punishment of
Felons are largely and freely examined_. The _Enquiry_ opens with a
powerful denunciation of the licence then allowed to the three great
causes, in Fielding's opinion, of the increasing demoralisation of the
'most useful Part' of the people. These were, first, the immense number of
places of amusement, all seducing the working classes to squander both
their money and their time; this being "indeed a certain Method to fill
the Streets with Beggars and the Goals with Debtors and Thieves." Here, in
Fielding's view, new legislation was demanded. The second cause of the
late excessive increase of crime, according to the _Enquiry_, was an
epidemic of gin drinking, "a new Kind of Drunkenness unknown to our
Ancestors [which] is lately sprung up amongst us." Gin, says Fielding,
appeared to be the principal sustenance of more than an hundred thousand
Londoners, "the dreadful Effects of which I have the Misfortune every Day
to see, and to smell too." The crime resulting from such drunkenness was
obvious; but Fielding, looking far beyond the narrow confines of his
court-room, beheld a future gin-sodden race, and he appeals to the
legislature to put a stop to a practice, the consequences of which must
alarm "the most sluggish Degree of Public Spirit." It is surely something
more than a coincidence that a few weeks after these warnings were
published, Hogarth issued his awful plate of _Gin Lane_. A third source of
crime, in Fielding's eyes, was the gambling among the 'lower Classes of
Life,'--a school "in which most Highwaymen of great eminence have been
bred," and a habit plainly tending to the "Ruin of Tradesmen, the
Destruction of Youth, and to the Multiplication of every Kind of Fraud and
Violence." In this case the 'Eminent Magistrate' finds new legislation
less needed than a vigorous enforcement of existing laws; such, he adds,
"as hath lately been executed with great Vigour within the Liberty of
Westminster." Before long the pages of _Amelia_ were to bring home yet
more forcibly to Fielding's readers the cruel results of the pleasures (or
speculations) of the needy gambler,--the 'Destruction of Familys,' thereby
incurred, no less than the breeding of highwaymen. Who does not remember
"that famous scene when Amelia is spreading, for the recreant who is
losing his money at the Kings Arms, the historic little supper of hashed
mutton, which she has cooked with her own hands, and denying herself a
glass of white wine to save the paltry sum of sixpence, 'while her Husband
was paying a Debt of several Guineas incurred by the Ace of Trumps being
in the hands of his Adversary'--a scene which it is impossible to read
aloud without a certain huskiness in the throat." [6] The last great cause
of crime which the _Enquiry_ considers, and with much learning and detail,
is the condition of the poor. Here Fielding's views on our modern problem
of the unemployed may be read. And here occurs a splendid denunciation of
the 'House of Correction' or Bridewell of the period, a prison for idle
and disorderly persons where "they are neither to be corrected nor
employed: and where with the conversation of many as bad and sometimes
worse than themselves they are sure to be improved in the Knowledge and
confirmed in the Practice of Iniquity." The most impudent of the wretches
brought before him, Fielding tells us, were always "such as have been
before acquainted with the Discipline of Bridewell." These prisons, from
which the disorderly and idle came out, "much more idle and disorderly
than they went in," were, says Fielding, no other than "Schools of Vice,
Seminaries of Idleness, and Common-sewers of Nastiness and Disease." A
fixed (and lower) rate of wages, it is curious to note, is one remedy
advocated in the _Enquiry_, for raising the condition of the poor.
Such were the 'temptations' to robbery that Fielding would have removed,
nobly conceiving the highest office of the legislature to be that of
prevention rather than cure. The _Enquiry_ concludes with offering some
more immediate palliatives for the diseased state of the body politic, in
the removing of actual 'Encouragement to Robbery.' First among such
encouragements Fielding places the fact that "the Thief disposes of his
goods with almost as much safety as the honestest Tradesman"; and he urged
the need of legislation to prohibit the amazing advertisements by which
our ancestors promised to give rewards for the recovery of stolen goods
"_and no questions asked_." Such advertisements he declares to be "in
themselves so very scandalous and of such pernicious Consequence, that if
Men are not ashamed to own they prefer an old Watch or a Diamond Ring to
the Good of [the] Society it is a pity some effectual Law was not
contrived to prevent their giving this public Countenance to Robbery for
the future." And, under this head, he advocates legislation either for the
regulating of pawnbrokers, or for the entire extirpation of a "Set of
Miscreants which, like other Vermin, harbour only about the Poor and grow
fat sucking their Blood." The subsequent legislation by which prosecutors
were recompensed for loss of time and money, when prosecuting the 'wolves
in society,' may be added to the measures forseen if not actually promoted
by Fielding's enlightened zeal. And in nothing was he more in advance of
his age than in his denunciation of that scandal of the eighteenth
century, the conduct and frequency of public executions. It has taken our
legislators a hundred years to provide the swift, solemn and private
executions urged by Henry Fielding, in place of the brutal 'Tyburn
holiday' enacted every six weeks for the benefit of the Georgian mob.
Another matter demanding legislation was the great probability of escape
afforded to thieves by the narrow streets and the common-lodging houses of
the day. Of the latter, crowded with miserable beds from the cellar to the
garret, let out, at twopence a night the single beds, and threepence the
double ones, Fielding draws a picture as terrible as any of his friend
Hogarth's plates. And he concludes "Nay I can add what I myself once saw
in the Parish of Shoreditch where two little Houses were emptied of near
seventy Men and Women," and where the money found on all the occupants
(with the exception of a pretty girl who was a thief) "did not amount to
one shilling." In all these houses gin, moreover, was sold at a penny the
quartern. Housed thus, in conditions destructive of "all Morality, Decency
and Modesty," with the street for bed if they fall sick ("and it is almost
a Miracle that Stench, Vermin, and Want should ever suffer them to be
well"), oppressed with poverty, and sunk in every species of debauchery,
"the Wonder in Fact is," cries Fielding, "... that we have not a thousand
more Robbers than we have; indeed that all these wretches are not thieves
must give us either a very high Idea of their Honesty or a very mean one
of their Capacity and Courage." And, leaving for a moment legislative
reform, Fielding delivers a vigorous attack on the national sluggishness
of public spirit which helped to render robbery a fairly safe profession.
With such sluggishness his ardent nature had very little sympathy. "With
regard to Private Persons," he protests, "there is no Country I believe in
the World where that vulgar Maxim so generally prevails that what is the
Business of every Man is the business of no Man; and for this plain
Reason, that there is no Country in which less Honour is gained by serving
the Public. He therefore who commits no crime against the Public, is very
well satisfied with his own Virtue; far from thinking himself obliged to
undergo any Labour, expend any Money, or encounter any Danger on such
Account." And in no part of the _Enquiry_ does the writer more truly show
his wisdom than in the pages on 'false Compassion' that plausible weakness
which refuses to prosecute the oppressors of the helpless and innocent,
and which at that time, in the person of his Majesty, King George II. was,
it appears, very active in pardoning offenders when convicted. Fielding's
arguments are incontestable; but his apologue may have found even more
favour in the age of wit. He hopes such good nature may not carry those in
power so far, "as it once did a Clergyman in _Scotland_ who in the fervour
of his Benevolence prayed to God that He would be graciously pleased to
pardon the poor Devil."
To the devil, whether in man or in society, Fielding was ever a 'spirited
enemy'; and his first biographer tells us that "to the unworthy he was
rather harsh." But the last page of this little book breathes that spirit
of tenderness for hard pressed humanity which in Fielding was so
characteristically mingled with a wholesome severity. If the legislature
would take proper care to raise the condition of the poor, then he
declares the root of the evil would be struck: "nor in plain Truth will
the utmost severity to Offenders be justifiable unless we take every
possible Method of preventing the offence ... the Subject as well as the
child should be left without Excuse before he is punished: for in that
Case alone the Rod becomes the Hand either of the Parent or the
Magistrate." And his last word is one of compassion for the "many
Cart-loads of our Fellow-creatures [who] once in six weeks are carried to
Slaughter"; of whom much the greater part might, with 'proper care and
Regulations' have been made "not only happy in themselves but very useful
Members of the Society which they now so greatly dishonour in the Sight of
all Christendom."
Henry Fielding is himself his own best illustration when he declares that
the "good Poet and the good Politician do not differ so much as some who
know nothing of either art affirm; nor would _Homer_ or _Milton_ have made
the worst Legislators of their Times."
To the reader of to-day the _Enquiry_ betrays no party flavour, but its
sedate pages clearly stirred up the hot feeling of the times. Early in
February the Advertiser announced "_This Day is published A Letter to
Henry Fielding Esqre. occasioned by his Enquiry into the causes of the
late increase of Robbers &c_." And about the end of the month there
appeared _Considerations_, in two numbers of the _True Briton_, "on
Justice Fielding's 'Enquiry,' shewing his Mistakes about the Constitution
and our Laws and that what he seems to propose is dangerous to our
Properties, Liberties and Constitution." On March 7 was announced
_Observations on Mr Fielding's Enquiry_, by one B. Sedgley. Some
opposition squib, too, must have been launched, to judge by the following
item from an advertisement column of the same date: "a Vindication of the
Rights and Privileges of the Commonality of England, in Opposition to what
has been advanced by the Author of the Enquiry, or to what may be
promulgated by any Ministerial Artifices against the public Cause of Truth
and Liberty. _By_ Timothy Beck_ the Happy Cobler of Portugal-street_."
[7] Perhaps some collector of eighteenth century pamphlets may be able to
reveal these comments of the '_Happy Gobler of Portugal-street_' upon the
'artifices' of Henry Fielding. [8]
In the February following the publication of the _Enquiry_ a Parlimentary
Committee was appointed "to revise and consider the Laws in being, which
relate to Felonies and other Offences against the Peace." [9] The
Committee included Lyttelton and Pitt, and there is of course every
probability that Fielding's evidence would be taken; but it seems
impossible now to discover what share he may have had in this move by the
Government towards fresh criminal legislation. There is, however, the
evidence of his own hand that in the matter of prison administration his
efforts were not limited to academic pamphlets, or to the indictment, so
soon to be published, contained in the terrible prison scenes of _Amelia_.
The following letter to the Duke of Newcastle [10] shows an anxious
endeavour to secure such good government as was possible for at least one
of the gaols.
"My Lord
"It being of the utmost consequence to the Public to have a proper Prison
Keeper of the new Prison at the Time, I beg leave to recommend Mr William
Pentlow a Constable of St George Bloomsbury to your Grace's Protection in
the present Vacancy. He is a Man of whose Courage and Integrity I have
seen the highest Proofs, and is indeed every way qualified for the
charge. I am with the most Perfect Respect,
"My Lord,
"Your Grace's most obedient
"and most humble servant,
"Henry Ffielding
"Bow Street Jan. 15. 1750 [1751]."
A second edition of the _Enquiry_ appeared early in the spring; and
according to the _Journals of the House of Commons_ it was resolved, in
April, that a Bill be brought in on the resolution of the Committee
appointed two months previously to consider criminal legislation. Again it
can only be surmised that Fielding's assistance would be invoked in the
drafting of this Bill. That his vigorous denunciations of the national
danger of the gin curse were in complete accord with the feeling of the
Government is apparent from the fact that two months later, in June 1751,
the _Tippling Act_ [11] received the royal assent, by which Act very
stringent restrictions were imposed on the sale of spirits.
In June Fielding again appears as Chairman of the Westminster Sessions.
[12] And in September cases occur as brought before John Fielding and
others "at Henry Fielding's house in Bow Street," [13] from which it
appears that Fielding's blind half-brother was already acting as his
assistant. In the following month John Fielding appears among the Justices
of the Westminster Quarter Sessions. [14]
The year that had seen the publication of the _Enquiry_, affords proof
enough of Fielding's active labours in criminal and social reform; but the
last month of this year is marked by an occurrence of much greater import
for English literature, the publication of the third great novel,
_Amelia_.
[1] Doubtless faithfully rendered in the old print, here reproduced, of
Fielding's blind half-brother, assistant, and successor, Sir John
Fielding, hearing a Bow Street case.
[2] See Appendix.
[3] Middlesex Records. _MSS. Sessions Books_. 1750.
[4] From the hitherto unpublished autograph, now at Woburn Abbey.
[5] This hitherto unpublished letter is now in the British Museum. It is
addressed to "--Perkins, Esq. at his Chambers No. 7, in Lincolns Inn
Square," and is sealed with Fielding's seal, a facsimile of which appears
on the cover of the present volume.
[6] _Fielding_. Austin Dobson. p. 156.
[7] _The General Advertiser_. March 7, 1751.
[8] The _London Magazine_ for February devoted five columns to an
"Abstract of Mr Fielding's Enquiry"; and in the following month the
_Magazine_ again noticed the book, by printing a long anonymous letter in
which Fielding is attacked as a 'trading author' and a 'trading justice,'
and in which the writer shows his intellectual grasp by advocating in all
seriousness a law prohibiting the sovereign from gambling!
[9] See _Journals of the House of Commons_. Vol. xxii. p. 27, and the
_London Magazine_. Vol. xx. p. 82. The _Catalogue of Printed Papers. House
of Commons_, 1750-51, includes "A Bill for the more effectual preventing
Robberies Burglaries and other Outrages within the City and Liberty of
Westminster--" &c.
[10] This hitherto unpublished letter is now in the British Museum. It is
endorsed "Jan. 15, 1750(1)."
[11] 24 George II. c. 40. June 1751.
[12] Middlesex Records. _Sessions Book_. 1751.
[13] _General Advertiser_. Sept. 9. 1751.
[14] Middlesex Records. _Sessions Book_. October, 1751.