Punch: Punch (76.1879)

February 15, 1879.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

63

\

''AT FIRST HAND."

Country Connoisseur. "Now, you are quite sure those are real 'Ciiromos'-''

Country Dealer (Draper and Grocer, &c). "Oh yes, Sir—We always has 'em direct
from his Studio, Sir ! "

TWO QUALITIES OF MEECY.

(Unstrained.)
(For Passing Sentence on a Bank Clerk.)
Prisoner at the Bar,

I have not the slightest doubt about the justice of the verdict. You have disgrace-
fully betrayed your trust. You have been found guilty of forgery—a crime which only a
few years ago was punishable with death. You forged, a document, by which you would
have received five pounds had not your deception been detected in the very nick of time.
It has been urged that you have a wife and six small children dependent upon you for
support. In my eyes, this is an aggravation of your crime. ISTot only have you brought
rum upon yourself, but upon your family. It has also been urged, that as your crime was
detected in its incipient stage, you did not actually receive any profit by the transaction. I

need scarcely observe, that this is quite
beside the question. 1 ou are punished that
others may take warning from your fate,
and thus avoid your evil courses. How-
ever, as the Jury have rather strangely
recommended you to mercy, I will not be
harsh. I award you eighteen years—to be
passed in penal servitude.

(Strained Carefully.)

(For Passing Sentence upon a Body of Bank
Directors.)

Prisoners at the Bar,

For thus, painful as it may be to
my feelings, I must call you. A Jury of
your countrymen, after a long trial, have,
with whatever reluctance, found you guilty
—a word I use with the greatest possible
regret. It is not for me to comment upon
the harshness of the language used in the
indictment. I sit here as Judge, not as
public prosecutor, and I am deeply thank-
ful that the cruel duty of the prosecution
has not devolved on me. It is to me a
source of deep satisfaction that you have
not been proved to have received in your
own name, and on your private accounts,
any identifiable portion of the large sums
obtained by the publication of false balance
sheets, and other documents of a misleading
character, which you have been found guilty
of fabricating and issuing. Had you been
distinctly traced in putting into your own
pockets, all, or most, of the money obtained
by means of these highly coloured publi-
cations, I should have considered your con-
duct (I trust you will pardon me for saying
so) decidedly open to severer animadversion
than I feel it necessary to apply to it under
the actual circumstances of the case. May
I be permitted to hint, that it would have
been better if you had not paid so many
millions into the accounts of firms so closely
connected with your own body. I cannot
help thinking, that the advocate who has
conducted the prosecution, has (no doubt
unconsciously) exceeded his duty. He has
painted—with a strength of colouring which
it might, perhaps, under the circumstances,
have shown better taste to have toned down
—the ruin flowing from what he calls your
misdeeds. You have thus been put to a
great deal of, what I must call, superfluous
suffering. I do not, for my part, quite see
what the wholesale ruin of widows < and
orphans has to do with the matters at issue
in this case. However, I must take the
law as I find it; and the law, I am afraid,
with its habitual sternness, proclaims you
guilty. The verdict of the Jury to that
effect has been received with a great deal
of unseemly applause, which it was my
duty, however reluctantly, to repress. It
is my painful task to remind you that you
are about to be punished, that others may
take warning from your fate, and thus
avoid what I trust you will allow me to
call your evil courses. Under these cir-
cumstances, I feel it my duty to sentence
the two most blameable of you to eighteen,
the less culpable—and I am happy to add,
the most of you—to eight months' impri-
sonment—of course, without hard labour,
in both cases.

edison extinguished.

The real modern Aladdin's Magician is
Mr. Sugg, who, by means of his improved
burner, gives us " new lamps for old ones."
See the Waterloo Road and Waterloo Place
passim. " 0, si sic omnia"—if all gas-
lights were like these, who would ask for
Edison and electricity ?