THE

HUMANE REVIEW

THE FLOGGING OUTBREAK IN

CARDIFF

THE revival of flogging on a large scale at the recent Glamorganshire Assizes aroused a passionate interest in every part of the United Kingdom. The first impression which the editorial comments of various newspapers and the letters from multitudes of correspondents could not fail to give was that the belief in flogging as a most salutary and unexceptionable punishment had not for many years displayed such vitality. One of the learned judges who conducted these assizes took the view that only persons afflicted with a perverse sentimentality had, or could have, any objection to the lash; and the Cardiff press, more particularly the Liberal press, applauded this view not only with enthusiasm, but with a contemptuous scurrility seldom displayed by it in any other cause. For once we have a Liberal Home Secretary who avowedly admires the lash, and who apparently only needs to be assured that the prisoner is convicted of "robbery with violence" in order to satisfy himself that he ought to be flogged. Up to the present the chief protest in Parliament against the sentences has been made by an Irish member, Mr. Swift MacNeill; one Liberal member, Mr. Donald Maclean, a resident of Cardiff, has been prominent in applauding them. Only a small minority of the Liberal papers commented adversely on the events in Cardiff.

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The Daily News contented itself with a benevolent neutrality, making no editorial remarks, and printed with open-minded impartiality the opinions of Mr. Salt on the humanitarian side, and of General Booth, Mr. Thomas Holmes, and Canon Horsley on the other. Its Parliamentary correspondent obviously regarded Mr. MacNeill's importunity as something of an impertinence, recording with apparent approval that the Speaker cut short this member's questions, "and called upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer."

In view of this, it is important to recall the very different reception which the press and the Tory House of Commons gave in 1900 to Mr. Wharton's Flogging Bill. The arguments which then prevailed against this Bill were based in the main, not on the unsuitability of this punishment to this or that offence, but upon the physical and moral injuriousness and the proved futility of the lash in respect of any crime whatever. No speaker in the Commons debate stated the objections to the lash more forcibly than the present Prime Minister. Yet the South Wales Daily News, the Cardiff Liberal organ, is now able to accuse persons who use precisely the same arguments as Mr. Asquith used then of "mawkish sentimentality" and "miserably contemptible cowardice." The fact that the weight of judicial and high legal opinion is opposed to the lash was either wholly unknown to the South Wales Daily News, or, if known, it was deliberately ignored. It was thus able to exhibit the opposition to flogging as the speciality of a number of amiable fanatics calling themselves "The Humanitarian League."

During the six weeks which followed the " Flogging Assize," as the Western Mail, the local Conservative paper, sonorously named the recent assizes, no arrest was made for robbery with violence in Cardiff. This fair record has since been besmirched; but in the meanwhile the press pointed to the absence of arrests as a striking vindication of the "cat." The enthusiastic Mr. Maclean was quite

satisfied that no case of robbery with violence could have occurred in Cardiff, seeing that there were no arrests; by way of silencing Mr. MacNeill he triumphantly asked the Home Secretary whether it was not the fact that since the assizes no case of robbery with violence had occurred, and Mr. Gladstone assured him that this was the fact. But it should be noticed that a small number of apprehensions for robbery with violence in Cardiff is by no means an unprecedented event. Only four persons from Cardiff were indicted for robbery with violence in March, 1907, four in July, 1907, and five in November, 1907. In July, 1907, in particular, there were several cases from Merthyr and Swansea; applying Mr. Maclean's reasoning, these two districts must, in the meanwhile, have been purged of this crime without the "cat," for all the cases at the assizes of last March came from Cardiff. That the frequency of this crime should fluctuate so violently as is suggested by the fact that twenty-seven persons from Cardiff were indicted for it I should consider very improbable; and, in fact, the police evidence made it abundantly clear that much police energy had recently been concentrated upon a particular quarter of the town known to be infested by violent characters; and the large number of arrests and the temporary diminution of the crime can most reasonably be ascribed to this concentration. Many of the accused, again, were stated by the police to have led for years a life in which this kind of crime would be a frequent incident. The South Wales Daily News of May 11 ingenuously declares :

"It is an interesting fact that not a single robbery with violence has been committed in Cardiff since Justice Lawrence was here. They were pretty frequent before. The 'bully,' however, has not quite given up all his evil ways. He fears the 'cat,' but he will rob all the samenot with violence, but with the aid of cunning and the confidence trick. The police seem to know this, and special plain-clothes men have been told off to watch off certain districts where the man and his decoy carry on their nefarious trade. The police are more than satisfied with the results of the 'cat' punishment."

This paragraph is in many ways significant and instructive; but I would especially draw attention to the kind of moral reformation which, in the opinion of this paper, the lash can effect.

The learned Judge who was chiefly responsible for the revival of flogging-Mr. Justice A. T. Lawrence—would hardly seem to have been designed by Nature for such a rôle. His contributions to the flogging controversy show him to be endowed with very mediocre intellectual powers, with very confused notions of jurisprudence, and with no knowledge of the annals of the lash. He possesses at least average kindliness of feeling, and is wholly free from the fanatical ferocity which lent such uniqueness to the judicial career of Sir John Day. In none of the Cardiff sentences did he exceed fifteen lashes, supplying a marked contrast in this respect to his arch-flogging predecessor. His comments on the "cat," one of which I quote below, were made almost wholly in the course of the singular homilies which most English judges have the strange taste to prefix to their sentences, and to which the public appears to listen with awed edification. His demeanour towards these prisoners was marked by a jocose and mildly cynical geniality which combined with his flogging sermons into a mixture not a little repulsive.

His health was not robust during the assizes, and on one day his place in the Crown Court was occupied by Mr. Justice Bray, who passed two flogging sentences. This Judge, unlike his brother, had on previous occasions resorted to flogging, though he has not the reputation of

a flogging judge." He displayed more dignity and discretion than his colleague: he contented himself with expressing his view that the lash was the appropriate punishment for this kind of crime; but he offered no reasons for his opinion, and he did not abuse those who have not yet attained to this enlightened stage.

The impression prevailed in Cardiff and South Wales that the flogging policy was not wholly the outcome of

Mr. Justice Lawrence's meditations, but that it was partly instigated by the authorities in London. The artless and blundering apologies of Mr. Justice Lawrence; the strange unanimity of the two Judges, not only in respect of flogging, but of the appropriate number of lashes; the furious applause of the local press; the singular conduct of the Home Secretary, combine to render this view at least plausible. The Western Mail suggested, indeed, that Mr. Justice Lawrence seemed to be emboldened to make a freer use of this "weapon" by the protests of the "humanitarians." I would fain regard this as nothing but a journalistic flourish. In any case, it was more than a dubious compliment to the hero's capacity for the position which he fills.

The following is one of the flogging lectures which roused the Cardiff papers to an ecstasy of admiration, the South Wales Daily News considering it to be a crushing lesson to the Humanitarian League not to interfere with the wisdom which shone through all the courses of "British justice":,

"I know there are some humanitarian people who object to the application of the lash, but we have to deal with prisoners of your class. I think there is no other method of convincing you that it is not a game it is worth continuing to play. You must be made to know that if you come into this court for committing robbery with violence, you will assuredly suffer for it, not merely by imprisonment for which you do not seem to care-but also on your person by receiving chastisement. If those persons who have such highly sentimental views happen to be the persons attacked, then I will listen to them and their desire that mercy should be shown; but until they are, they must try to realise to some extent the condition of those people who are subject to the treatment men like you give them."

It is hard to believe that the learned Judge expected anyone except the prisoner to take seriously the view that in awarding punishment the sentiments of the prosecutor are the thing to be considered. But the South Wales Daily News, in applauding this speech, proceeded to express what appeared to be the learned Judge's opinion, not only