Property versus Person.
The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the liberties of a great proportion of the population has been laid at the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor spin.
-JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.
IN A CIVILIZATION FRANKLY materialistic and based upon property, not soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes against the person.To pound one's wife to a jelly and break a few of her ribs is a trivial offence compared with sleeping out under the naked stars because one has not the price of a doss.The lad who steals a few pears from a wealthy railway corporation is a greater menace to society than the young brute who commits an unprovoked assault upon an old man over seventy years of age.While the young girl who takes a lodging under the pretence that she has work commits so dangerous an offence, that, were she not severely punished, she and her kind might bring the whole fabric of property clattering to the ground.Had she unholily tramped Piccadilly and the Strand after midnight, the police would not have interfered with her, and she would have been able to pay for her lodging.
The following illustrative cases are culled from the police court reports for a single week:
Widnes Police Court.Before Aldermen Gossage and Neil.Thomas Lynch, charged with being drunk and disorderly and with assaulting a constable.Defendant rescued a woman from custody, kicked the constable, and threw stones at him.Fined 3s.6d.for the first offence, and 10s.and costs for the assault.
Glasgow Queen's Park Police Court.Before Bailie Norman Thompson.
John Kane pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife.There were five previous convictions.Fined L2 2s.