Queen-and-the-prisoner-at-the-bar-shall-be-
the-Truth-the-whole-Truth-and-nothing-but-
the-Truth-so-help-you-God."

Between our Sovereign Lady the Queen,
the best honoured woman in this nation, and
the prisoner at the bar, accounted base, even
among the fallen, a night wanderer among
the kennels of Whitechapel. That was the
cause. A woman of her own class accused
her, for that she, at six o'clock in the morning,
fell upon her with foul oaths at the door
of a gin shop, stabbed her in the face and
bosom with a knife, and hunted her with the
fury of a tigress into the shop where she was
taken. The knife was produced, contrasting
curiously with the knife used by the man in
the preceding case. It was a small, white-
handled pen-knife, a woman's knife. The
prisoner, who had no counsel to defend her,
fiercely questioned her accuser and the buxom
barmaid who came forward with corroborative
evidence. She cried out that she never
touched the woman, and denied, while she
displayed, the wild jealousy that prompted
the assault. Then she turned fiercely on the
barmaid and asked, "What time did you say
she ran into your shop and I came after her?"
—"At six o'clock."—"Well then," shouted
the prisoner, "you see she's telling lies,
gentlemen; for how could I go in at six o'clock
when it's well known that the shop don't
open till half-past?"

The woman was found guilty, and at the
word, her passion changed into a storm of
sobs. The wild, fallen woman, full of
wickedness, shaking with passion in the dock of
the Old Bailey, not lowered an inch in
reputation by the seal of guilt there stamped upon
her, was a spectacle to stir emotion in the
hearts of men who have ever knelt in
innocence at mothers' knees, or seen their wives
singing with light and happy hearts over
their children. Womanhood never can sink
by choice down to this level.

Between our Sovereign Lady the Queen,
and such wretched prisoners, there is a
justice that can be done out of the Old
Bailey. There was a time when they or
those who bred them into vice were honest
people. How many of them were debased
by ignorance before they were debased by
vice? It is better worth while to prevent
ten persons from sinking in a bog, than
to pull one person out of it. It is better
worth while to educate and guide the poor,
so as to prevent honest men from falling by
scores into crime, than to erect apparatus
by which now and then a criminal may be
hauled up again into the road of honesty.

The woman having been withdrawn, there
arose a short discussion between the learned
brethren of the bar and their brethren on the
bench, concerning the arrangement of
succeeding business. Some cases were postponed,
mutual conveniences were discussed, and
presently there was summoned to the bar a
young man with a much oiled head, and at
the end of his fore-shortened body, which
seemed to be well apparelled, was a pair of
delicate French boots. He was accused of
forgery, and by advice of counsel, pleaded
guilty, with the proviso that he did not write
the violated name. Being made to understand
that his proviso was useless and
cumbrous, he withdrew it. His case had in it
some points of public interest, and behold—
there was a reporter in the box. I had not
seen him enter. He was not there during the
previous cause, but the question of commercial
fraud had brought him up, as Zamiel
might have been fetched up by any other
potent incantation. The young man in the
well-brushed hair and faultless boots, seemed
to be little more than twenty-three years old;
he was a clerk in a mercantile firm, and his
story was, that at a time when he was labouring
under great domestic embarrassment, he
found, tossing about loose in the counting-
house, a blank cheque, to which there was
attached, ready for future use, the signature
of his employers. The temptation was too
great for his weak moral sense. He filled it
up, and boldly too, with no less a sum than
twelve hundred pounds, and taking it to the
bank, signed by the firm itself, cashed it with
ease. He thought that, as the signature was
genuine, no imitation of his own, he had not
been guilty of forgery. The legal wrong is,
however, in this case co-extensive with the
moral wrong. In the eye of the law he was
a forger. His employers recommended him
to mercy, because, except the loss of about a
hundred pounds that he had spent in frippery,
they got their money back. The crime
was, however, not to be measured by the
degree of the vindictive feeling it excited.
The young man, therefore, was sentenced to
ten years of transportation.

Another offender from the classes of the
ignorant, which yield the bulk and mass of
all the cases tried at the Old Bailey, was then
placed at the bar. Another bandaged
accuser, an old man, came into the witness-
box, who, being deaf, was elevated to the
Bench, that he might hear more readily
the questions put to him. It was another
knife case. The reporter had vanished
silently, and I, weary of wretched details, also
departed.

I had much more to tell, and many
meditations to communicate. But it is not well or
fair to speak too largely of the world, as seen
from the Old Bailey point of view; one is
compelled to look upon it, then, "with a sad,
leaden, downward cast," not with the frank
glances for which eyes were made. I will not
dwell too long on the dark side of life, for it
becomes me to remember, as a last wholesome
meditation upon roguery, that there are
thousands and thousands of houses in
London wherein business of all kinds is
conducted, and that in those houses there are
thousands and thousands of men honouring
faithfully the trusts reposed in them—that