HENRY FIELDING AS A LAW REFORMER furnish me with money enough to offer him a good round sum at once; and (I think it is for your good I speak) fifty pounds is the least that can be offered him. I do assure you I would offer him no less, was it my own case." Murphy dies suddenly at a public place called Tyburn Tree toward the close of the book. Then Mr. Bondum, the bailiff, another pretty specimen of the carrion that infested the purlieus of the law in the eighteenth century, is introduced to the reader's notice. " His desire was no more than to accumulate bail-bonds; for the bailiff was reckoned an honest and good sort of man in his way, and had no more malice against the bodies in his custody than a butcher has to those in his. And as the latter, when he takes his knife in his hand, has no idea but of the joints into which he is to cut the carcass, so the former, when he handles his writ, has no other design but to cut out the body into as many bail-bonds as possible. As to the life of the animal, or the liberty of the man, they are thoughts which never obtrude themselves on either." Space will not permit us to quote further from the pages of Amelia, but enough of it has been analyzed to vindicate our opinion that the book is one of the most cogent arguments for law reform in the literature of fiction. But, as has been pointed out, law reform alone does not exhaust the purpose of the author. Amelia is also a plea for cleaner and nobler living by the average man and woman of the day. That stern moralist, Dr. Johnson, was so taken with it that he read the book through at a sitting, although he had previously thought very little of Fielding's motives
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and aims. The heroine of the book is one of the finest conceptions of woman hood in all creative literature. " Amelia is still the finest woman in England," said the author in his concluding paragraph, and he then unknowingly expressed the opinion of sound criticism down to this day. Notwithstanding the ever obvious purpose of the author, this book will always be read because of its charm and interest as a story pure and simple. Fielding only lived three years after the publication of his last novel; but during that time his interest in law and law reform showed no abatement. He continued to write pamphlets on legal subjects, and never lost sight of the obligations of his commission of the peace. This notice was frequently to be read in the prints: "TO THE PUBLIC. All persons who shall, for the future, suffer by Robbers, Burglars, etc., are desired immediately to bring, or send, the best Description they can of such Robbers etc., with the Time and Place and Circum stances of the fact, to Henry Fielding, Esq., at his house in Bow Street." He died at Lisbon on the 8th of October, 1754, in his forty-eighth year, bequeathing to literature some of its choicest possessions, and to the Bar a perpetual regret that so ardent a worshipper at the shrine of Justice, and so industrious a student of the laws, was prevented from taking that high place in its annals which, in circumstances less obdurate, would undoubtedly have been his. Ottawa. Canada, July, 1907
