Points of Friction
offence against a fellow-creature, which fellow-creature is called a victim, and interests nobody. Sir Alfred Wills and Sir Robert Anderson both held that thieves, big thieves especially, should be compelled to say what disposition had been made of stolen property, and that they should be imprisoned for life if they refused. Anderson was firm in his insistence that the act of thieving alienates such property actually, but not legally or morally, from its owner, and that serving a sentence for robbery does not clear the robber's title to the goods. He also pointed out that the most heartless thefts are committed daily at the expense of people in decent but narrow circumstances, because such people are compelled to leave their homes unprotected. He instanced the case of one woman robbed of her scanty savings, and of another who lost her dead soldier husband's medals, and the few poor cherished trinkets he had given her.
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