Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1876 — A Sample of English Justice. [ARTICLE]

A Sample of English Justice.

What a certain young English girl, named Elizabeth Tracey, aged sixteen, thinks of law and justice as they are in her country, it might be interesting to know. Doubtless she had been brought up to understand that if she should do this or that bad thing she would be brought before that dread body, the magistrates, and perhaps cast into that abode of loneliness and horror, the county jail. Her advantages for the study of subtle legal distinctions were, indeed, of the smallest; for she is a laborer’s daughter, and began life as a farm-maid, never saw a city, much less a law-court in ner ,life; the wigs of “lordships” are, very likely, a fashion utterly'strange-to her; and, if she knew there were such things as prisons, it may well have been because she was frightened by their vague terrors, as a method of maternal warning, when she was in her pinafores. Latterly, however, Elizabeth Tracey has acquired quite an extensive practical knowledge of certain phases of British justice; and so deeply has this been impressed upon her mind that it would not be surprising if her whole view of the world’s affairs were permanently changed by it. She was serving as farm-maid to a farmer in her native village. One morning, last September, she was sent to the woodshed for some wood. There Is some reason to suppose that, while there, she dropped a brooch. At all events, she lit a match to search for it, and then threw the match away. Presently the woodshed was found to be on fire. The fire was speedily cutout; but Elizabeth was forthwith arrested, and next morning carried before the magistrates on a charge of arson. She told her simple, straightforward tale, and proved, moreover, that she had gone at once to her clergyman and told him exactly how the fire occurred. Her character was, moreover, unimpeached, nor did her accuser pretend to suggest any motive on her part for committing the alleged crjme. But the squires who composed the bench committed Elizabeth for trial at the next assizes.

Now, it is the sage law of England that no winter assize is held on a circuit, unless there are at least six persons to be tried. It happened, unfortunately for Elizabeth, that people in her neighborhood had been very quiet and law-abiding about the time of her committal. There was, in fact, no winter assize. Nobody could or would furnish bail for her ; and the result was that this young girl lay in Gloucester jail, with no crime proved upon her, for seven weary months.. When at last justice made its tardy appearance, Elizabeth was confronted with it, tried by it, and passed over to the mercies of a jury of her peers. All evidence against her vanished like the baseless fabric of a dream, and the jury declared her innocent without leaving their seats. If a law is not defective which thus keeps an innocent young girl in jail for seven months, which feeds her on felons’ fare-, which casts the mildew and disgrace of the prison over her whole life, which brands upon her memory the re®ollection of a long, dark, weary period of horrible suspense and misery, and which has no further reparation to make for an injury so deep and so permanent than that ot politely bowing her out of court, with the assurance that a story told seven months ago is at last believed, then the occupation of reformers is gone indeed. It would be no wonder if Elizabeth Tracey should turn out a bad girl; and, if so, English justice will clearly be responsible for a crime in comparison with which the burning of a woodshed is a trivial offense. — Appletone' Journal.