The Tables Turned | Page 5

head_). It now remains for me to give sentence. Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted by a jury of your countrymen--
A Voice. That's a lie! You convicted her: you were judge and jury both.
_J. N_. (_in a fury_). Officer, you are a disgrace to your coat! Arrest that man, I say. I would have had the Court cleared long ago, but that I hoped that you would have arrested the ruffian if I gave him a chance of repeating his--his crime.
[The USHER makes his usual promenade.
_J. N_. You have been convicted by a jury of your countrymen of stealing three loaves of bread; and I do not see how in the face of the evidence they could have come to any other verdict. Convicted of such a serious offence, this is not the time and place to reproach you with other misconduct; and yet I could almost regret that it is not possible to put you once more in the dock, and try you for conspiracy and incitement to riot; as in my own mind I have no doubt that you are in collusion with the ruffianly revolutionists, who, judging from their accent, are foreigners of a low type, and who, while this case has been proceeding, have been stimulating their bloodstained souls to further horrors by the most indecent verbal violence. And I must here take the opportunity of remarking that such occurrences could not now be occurring, but for the ill-judged leniency of even a Tory Government in permitting that pest of society the unrespectable foreigner to congregate in this metropolis.
A Voice. What do they do with you, you blooming old idiot, when you goes abroad and waddles through the Loover?
_J. N_. Another of them! another of those scarcely articulate foreigners! This is a most dangerous plot! Officer, arrest everybody present except the officials. I will make an example of everybody: I will commit them all.
_Mr. H_. (leaning over to JUDGE). I don't see how it can be done, my lord. Let it alone: there's a Socialist prisoner coming next; you can make him pay for all.
_J. N_. Oh! there is, is there? All right--all right. I'll go and get a bit of lunch (_offering to rise_).
Clerk. Beg pardon, my lord, but you haven't sentenced the prisoner.
_J. N_. Oh, ah! Yes. Oh, eighteen months' hard labour.
_M. P_. Six months for each loaf that I didn't steal! Well, God help the poor in a free country! Won't you save all further trouble by hanging me, my lord? Or if you won't hang me, at least hang my children: they'll live to be a nuisance to you else.
_J. N_. Remove the woman. Call the next case. (_Aside_: And look sharp: I want to get away.)
[Case of JOHN or JACK FREEMAN called.]
_Mr. H_. I am for the prosecution, my lord.
_J. N_. Is the prisoner defended?
Jack Freeman. Not I.
_J. N_. Hold your tongue, sir! I did not ask you. Now, brother Hungary.
_Mr. H_. Once more, my lord and gentlemen of the Jury, I rise to address you; and, gentlemen, I must congratulate you on having the honour of assisting on two State trials on one day; for again I am instructed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to prosecute the prisoner. He is charged with sedition and incitement to riot and murder, and also with obstructing the Queen's Highway. I shall bring forward overwhelming evidence to prove the latter offence--which is, indeed, the easiest of all offences to be proved, since the wisdom of the law has ordained that it can be committed without obstructing anything or anybody. As for the other, and what we may excusably consider the more serious offence, the evidence will, I feel sure, leave no doubt in your minds concerning the guilt of the prisoner. I must now give you a few facts in explanation of this case. You may not know, gentlemen of the Jury, that in the midst of the profound peace which this glorious empire now enjoys; in spite of the liberty which is the proud possession of every Briton, whatever his rank or fortune; in spite of the eager competition and steadily and swiftly rising wages for the services of the workmen of all grades, so that such a thing as want of employment is unheard of amongst us; in spite of the fact that the sick, the infirm, the old, the unfortunate, are well clothed and generously fed and housed in noble buildings, miscalled, I am free to confess, _work_houses, since the affectionate assiduity of our noble Poor Law takes every care that if the inmates are of no use to themselves they shall at least be of no use to any one else,--in spite of all these and many kindred blessings of civilisation, there are, as