CHAPTER XVII LAW AND ORDER

The English love to be ruled, just as eels are said to take delight in being skinned. They hold that a nation which is properly ruled cannot fail of happiness. Their notion of rule may be summed up in the phrase, "Law and order." The Englishman believes that law and order are heaven-sent blessings especially invented for his behoof. "Where else in the world," he will ask you grandiloquently, "do you get such law and such order as you get in England—the land of the free?" If anybody picks his pocket, or encroaches upon his land, or infringes his patent rights, or diverts his water-courses, the Englishman knows exactly what to do. There is the law. They keep it on tap in great build[Pg 164]ings called courts, and persons in wigs serve out to you precisely what you may deserve with great gusto and solemnity. The man picked your pocket, did he? Three months' imprisonment for the man. Somebody is making colourable imitations of your patent dolls' eyes. Well, you can apply for an injunction. And so on.

This is law. All Englishmen believe in it, particularly those who have never had any. When it comes to the worst, and the Englishman finds that he really must take on a little of his own beautiful specific, he usually begins by falling into something of a flutter. Those bewigged and sedate persons seated in great chairs, with bouquets in front of them and policemen to bawl "Silence!" for them, begin to have a new meaning for the Englishman. Hitherto he has regarded them complacently as the bodily representatives of the law in a free country. He has smacked his lips over them, rejoiced in their learning, wit, and acumen, warmed at the notion of their dignity, and thanked God that he belonged[Pg 165] to a free people—free England. Now, when it comes to a trifling personal encounter before this mountain of dignity—this mountain of dignity perched on a mountain of precedent, as it were—the Englishman shivers and looks pale. But his solicitor and his counsel and his counsel's clerk—particularly his counsel's clerk—soon put him at his ease, and instead of withdrawing at the feel of the bath, he is fain to plump right in. Whether he comes out on top or gets beaten is another matter; in any case, the trouble about the thing is that, win or lose, it is infinitely and appallingly costly. Law, the Englishman's birthright, is not to be given away. If you want any, you must pay for it, and pay for it handsomely, too. Otherwise you can go without. The English adage to the effect that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor is one of those adages which are very subtly true. There is a law for the rich, certainly. There is also a law for the poor—namely, no law at all. On the whole the Englishman who has not had his[Pg 166] pristine dream of English law shattered by contact with the realities is to envied. All other Englishmen, whether their experience has lain in County Courts, High Courts, or Courts of Appeal, talk lovingly of English law with their tongues in their cheeks.

With respect to order, the much bepraised handmaiden of law, I do not think that the English get half so much of her as they think they do. She costs them a pretty penny. The up-keep of her police and magistrates and general myrmidons runs the Englishman into some noble taxation; yet where shall you find an English community that is orderly if even an infinitesimal section of it has made up its mind to be otherwise? In London at the present moment there are whole districts which it is not safe for a decently dressed person to traverse even in broad daylight; and these districts are not by any means slum districts, but parts of the metropolis in which lie important arteries of traffic. There is not a square mile of the metropolitan area which does not boast its organised gang of[Pg 167] daylight robbers, purse-snatchers, watch-snatchers, and bullies who would beat a man insensible for fourpence, and whose great weapon is the belt.

For convenience' sake these people have been grouped together under the term "Hooligan." The police—the far-famed London police—can do nothing with them. They admit that they are ineradicable and irrepressible. The magistrates and the newspapers keep on asseverating that "something must be done." That something apparently consists in the capture of a stray specimen of the tribe, who is forthwith given three months, with perhaps a little whipping thrown in. But hooliganism is a business that continues to flourish like the green bay-tree, and London is no safer to-day than it was in the time of the garotters. As the belt is the weapon of the London robber, and as Hooligan is his name, so we find in all the larger provincial towns gangs of scoundrels with special instruments and slang names of their own. In Lancashire and the Black[Pg 168] Country kicking appears to be the favourite method of dealing with the order-loving citizen. In some of the northern towns the knuckle-duster, the sand-bag, and the loaded stick are requisitioned; and in all cases we are told the police are powerless. The fact is, that, on the whole, England cannot be reckoned an orderly country. The "hooligans" and their provincial imitators are just straws that show the way of the wind. When these persons say: "We will do such and such things in contravention of the law," there is practically nothing to stop them. In the same way, when a community determines to run amuck on an occasion of "national rejoicing" (such as the late Mafeking night), or because a strike is in progress, or a charity dinner has been badly served, or the vaccination laws are being enforced, it does so at its own sweet will, and order can be hanged. Once a week, too,—namely, on Saturday nights,—English order, like the free list at the theatres, is entirely suspended. Saturday night is the recognised and inviolable[Pg 169] hour of the mob. Throughout the country your flaring English gin-palaces are at their flaringest; the beer-pumps sing together with a myriad voices, and the clink of glasses takes the evening air with beauty. Until, perhaps, eight o'clock all goes well; then the quarrelsomeness which the English masses extract from their cups begins to assert itself, and the chuckers-out (in what other country in the world are there chuckers-out?) and the police begin to be busy. Till long after midnight their hands are full, and it is not until the Sabbath is a couple of hours old that the English masses seek their rest. In the meantime what squalid indiscretions, what sins against humanity, what outrages, have not been committed? The bare consumption of drink alone has been appalling; the bickerings, angry shoutings, indulgences in pugilism and hair-pulling, have been infinite; and on Monday morning the police-courts will have their usual plethora of drunks and disorderlies, wife-beatings and assaults on the police, with, perhaps, a case or two of[Pg 170] manslaughter and a murder to put the crown on things.

In the main, therefore, law and order may be counted among John Bull's many illusions. They are, as one might say, sweet to meditate upon; they look all right on paper, and they sound all right in the mouths of orators. For the rest the Englishman who is wise smiles and keeps a folded tale. One may note, before leaving this entertaining subject, that in England lawyers and laymen alike take a special pride in admitting a certain ignorance. At the bare mention of Scots law they lift up pious hands and impious eyes and say, "Thank Heaven, we know nothing about it!"