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THE GREEN BAG
He perfectly well understood that funda mental principle, so strongly laid down in the institutes of the learned Rochefoucauld, by which the duty of self-love is so strongly enforced, and every man is taught to consider himself as the centre of gravity, and to attract all things thither. To speak the truth plainly, the Justice was never indifferent in a cause, but when he could get nothing on either side." Then follows a portrayal of certain proceedings before this excellent magistrate, in which the humorous element is never allowed to derogate from the dignity of the satire. One who is falsely charged by his assailant with a previous assault is convicted because he admitted himself to be an Irishman! (Semble, that an Irishman is presumed to be guilty until he is proved to be innocent, and such proof is inadmissible!) A poor servant who goes to fetch a physician at midnight for her sick mistress is condemned as a street-walker, without being allowed to disprove the infamous charge. Finally, Booth, the hero of the book, is sent to prison on evidence grossly inadequate to convict because he was shabbily dressed, having been unable to previously purchase his liberty from a banditti of constables, although they appraised his ransom at the modest sum of half-a-crown. Where upon the author comments : " The magistrate had too great an honour for Truth, to suspect that she ever appeared in sordid apparel!" In Chapters III and IV we are introduced to the interior of Newgate, and its devilish crew of inmates. That any " unfortunate" sent here for debt, or to expiate his or her first offense, could do aught but become a hardened criminal and a menace to society thenceforward is beyond belief. Later on in the book we find the governor of this ante chamber to the Dantean abyss deriving a pretty income from the sale of liquor to, and the promotion of illicit intercourse between, the male and female prisoners. The scenes are too shameless to be even hinted at here;
but we must remember that Fielding's motives as a reformer necessarily made him a realist, and that he wrote in an age of small refinement in any walk of life. There was no man to be found about the institution, in any sphere of authority what soever, who would not defeat the ends of justice for a price. Listen to one of the speeches of the governor: " I never desire to keep a prisoner longer than the law allows, not I; I always inform them they can be bailed as soon as I know it. I never make any bargain, not I; I always love to leave those things to the gentlemen and ladies themselves. I never suspect gentlemen and ladies of wanting generosity." Beyond doubt such a book exerted a powerful influence on the mind of John Howard, to whose efforts the prison reform Acts of 1774 were chiefly due. But it was not only prison betterment that fell with the ambit of Fielding's argu ment for law reform in Amelia. He never did anything by halves. In his Tom Jones he seems to have exhausted the whole range of conduct. — the result being a measurably complete comtdie humaine in one book. Walter Bagehot thought the term "ubiquitous" the best descriptive epithet for such a study of life. And so in Amelia, Fielding's eighteenth century readers were furnished with portraits of every member of the rogues' gallery in order that they might be won over to the prompt purgation of existing social evils. We have already seen his picture of Thrasher, the corrupt and ignorant justice. Later on we have Murphy, the shyster lawyer, suborner and forger, called occa sionally upon the stage to mouth his in famies. He wants money from a prisoner (frank enough to confess her guilt) in order to bribe a witness to perjure himself: "When a man knows from the unhappy circumstances of the case, that you can procure no other witness but himself he is always dear. It is so in all other ways of business .... The safest way is to
