Mr. Cross, with his usual judgment, has remitted two-thirds 'of
the monstrous sentence of twenty-one days' imprisonment with hard labour, passed by Mr. Barstow, the police-magistrate of Clerkenwell, on the child William Lambourne, for taking a leek out of St. Pancras Churchyard. The St. Pancras authori- ties themselves were, it appears, as much shocked with the sentence as any one else, and the vestry clerk of St. Nunes wrote to the magistrate suggesting a reconsideration of the sentence. Mr. Barstow, however, replied that without such sen- tences petty thefts from gardens could not be checked, and alleged that of 300 leeks planted, 85 had been stolen, and that four leeks were found on the child's person when he was charged with stealing one of them. That, however, is no reason at all for punishing a little child of ten or eleven as if he were a fully respon- sible agent, instead of securing his correction by his parents. The sentence, under the circumstances, might not have been too severe for a full-grown man, though it would have been sharp enough ; but it is obvious that Mr. Barstow must hold peculiar views on the subject of responsibility. Has, perhaps, Professor Tyndall made a convert of him, and persuaded him that as no human being is really responsible, though all need training, the sharpest lessons should be given to those whose plastic and as yet unformed natures offer most prospect of retaining the impres- sions they make ?
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