with that throng of entirely antagonistic people
about him, going in among them single-handed
to do what he had to do, is in reality a terrible
one. The courage which this same John Chapple
must have possessed can only have been of the
best and most exalted kind; and it would be a
difficult thing to explain why such service, as
a man like this renders to the State, should not
be rewarded by the Victoria Cross.

The acts of ruffianism which are here
exhibited are very far from being the only specimen
cases of similar brutality which we might
quote if space permitted, or if any object was
to be gained by the multiplication of
instances. We read continually of policemen
being knocked down, of their being pelted with
bricks, rubbish, mud; of dangerous assaults by
kicking. We read of officers suffering severely
from the effects of blows and kicks; of a policeman
thrown down seven or eight times, and
nearly throttled; of another struck in the face
with a chair. For many months the newspapers
have been full of such things, and they
continue to report them still. On the very day
when these words are written the old story is
told again, with one or two new features.
Soldiers are the offenders this time. Two of
them, accompanied by a woman, fasten upon a
policeman outside the Marble Arch, and require
him, at twelve o'clock at night, to let them into
the park. The policeman refuses, and is
instantly set upon by the soldiers (a third having
in the mean time come up and joined the party),
and so cruelly maltreated that he is disabled
for nearly a month. It is a curious feature of
this case that a thief, who happens to be passing
at the time, comes up while the unhappy
constable is being mauled, and recommends the
soldiers to take the policeman to a retired part
of the park and there "finish him quietly."

It is impossible to study these records of crime,
and of the punishments awarded to crime, without
being struck by the strange inconsistencies
which, as it appears to persons unacquainted
with the intricacies of law, are from time to time
perpetrated in our courts of justice. There may
be, it is true, circumstances connected with some
of these cases which do not appear in the reports,
and which might, if recorded, affect the opinion
which we form in reading them. But of what is
not put upon record we cannot, of course, be
expected to take cognisance, and as such reports
stand, they do certainly seem sometimes a little
startling. The most ordinary newspaper reader
cannot fail to observe, as he goes through his
police reports and his trials, that what we call luck
or chance has, to all appearance, a considerable
amount of influence in deciding the fate of the
convicted prisoner, which seems often to depend
on something altogether independent of the
published evidence. That "something" may in
certain cases be a valid something, the legitimacy
of whose influence we should admit if we were
made acquainted with it; but we are often not a
little mystified to find offences of apparently
exactly the same nature punished on one
occasion with remarkable severity, and on another
with equally remarkable leniency. Or we
observe that some outrage, which makes our
blood boil with indignation, is dealt with in the
mildest fashion, while, at the same time, to some
quite small misdeed a very heavy penalty is
awarded.

Taking still the newspaper records of the last
few months, we find many instances of what
certainly looks like inconsistency in the distributing
of those penalties which the law has power
to inflict. Some of these, however, are
comprehensible when the principle on which such
penalties are awarded comes to be considered.
Take, for instance, the two following cases, the
first reported on the 6th of August, the second
on the 10th of September:

BEFORE MR. PAYNE.—Henry Johnson, eighteen,
was charged with stealing a watch from the person
of Mr. Stanley Dent, of 34, Great Tower-street.
Mr. Abram prosecuted; Mr. Harris defended. The
prosecutor was standing on the steps of Her Majesty's
Theatre, about twelve, on the night of the 9th of
July, when the prisoner came up, snatched away his
watch, and ran off. The prosecutor followed him
into Charles-street, where he was stopped by a policeman,
who asked him why he was running, to which
he replied that he did not know. Almost immediately
after the prisoner was caught, some one in the crowd
handed the prosecutor's watch to the constable. The
jury returned a verdict of guilty. The prisoner had
been previously convicted of stealing a pocket-book
from the person of Mr. Clay, M.P., in the lobby of
the House of Lords, in 1863. Other convictions also
were proved against him. Mr. Payne sentenced him
to be kept in penal servitude for seven years.

CLERKENWELL.—John Burke, aged seventeen,
who refused both his address and occupation, and
Edward Dobson, aged nineteen, a brass finisher
giving his address St. John-street-road, Clerkenwell,
were charged before Mr. Cooke with assaulting and
stealing from the person of Mr. George Hopson
Blowers, a draper, of 12, Commerce-place, Brixton-
road, a watch of the value of six pounds six shillings,
at High-street, Clerkenwell. The prosecutor was
seeing a lady into one of the Barnsbury omnibuses,
round which were a great number of persons. While
doing so he was violently pushed against, and heard
a snap as if his watch-guard had been broken. He
looked and saw the prisoner Burke trying to get out
of the crowd. He collared hold of him, and then he
was violently pushed against, and an attempt was
made to rescue him. Assistance was rendered to the
prosecutor, and Burke was pushed into the Bluecoat
Boy public-house, and there the watch was taken
from his hand. Dobson, who had been seen by the
police in company with the other prisoner, was
afterwards apprehended, and then he said that he knew
nothing of the prisoner or of the charge. The
prisoners pleaded guilty. Mr. Cooke said that had
anything been known against the character of the
prisoners he should have felt it his duty to send the
case for trial. He should pass on them the highest
sentence that he could, namely, that they be
imprisoned and kept to hard labour in the House of
Correction for six calendar months.

At first sight, the difference between the
punishment inflicted in the first of these cases,
and that awarded in the second, seems very
startling. The charge is the same in both,
snatching a watch from the person of its owner
in the street. Yet this same offence is visited
in one instance with penal servitude for seven