V aim', AND ROSE-WATER.
A. CORRESPONDENT of the Times, on Wednesday, described
an outrage which is, we imagine,• almost without precedent in England. A respectable woman, walking with her husband iu the Hampstead-road, suddenly felt some liquid on her legs, followed by excessive pain. Some ruffian, coming behind her, it appears, stooped down and flung a quantity of oil of vitriol upwards under her petticoats. Fortunately, thick woollen petticoats, without crinoline, caught most of the shower, but her legs were most severely burned. The ruffian, supposed to be a lad, escaped, but had he been caught, to what penalty would he have been exposed'? We fear only to a month's imprisonment. Au idea of the absolute equality of all kinds of assault seems to have spread among the magistracy till an angry blow and a crime equal in malignity to a murder are visited with almost the same penalty. We have pointed out repeatedly the inadequacy of the protection which the law, as worked, offers to women, but even as regards men it is far too lenient. There are forms of assault which, in their careful preparation or scientific malignity, are not as- saults but acts of torture ; yet they are all classed in one common category, and visited with a few months' imprisonment. A tiaman of 17, for example, and a "finer" of 18, were tried on the 11th in- stant for throwing oil of vitriol over a workman, Fox. It was proved that the prisoners had threatened Fox, that they waylaid him, and that they threw a can of oil of vitriol over his head. The object, of course, was to destroy his eyes, and a more horrible crime it is scarcely possible to conceive. Most men would deliberately choose death in preference t9 the agony and life-long suffering caused by such an outrage; Fox, raising a shovel in his hand by an instinctive movement, saved his eyes, but his head and neck were terribly burned, and the case excited such indignation in the judge, that he said that but for their youth he would have sentenced them to im- prisonment for life, or a long portion of it. He, however, only in- flicted one year's imprisonment, and the wide disparity between the threat and the sentence just indicates the mental confusion prevail, ing on the point. The men were threatened with the penalty of murder and punished with that of ordinary theft, the crime being, in effect and in motive, the exact equivalent of an attempt to murder. The fault in this case, as elsewhere, is not in the law, but in its ap- plication. It is just the same in the stabbing cases now so frequent in our streets. If a man strikes a knife into another and kills him, justice is aroused in a moment, and the murderer is certainly con- victed, and probably hanged. But if the ruffian stops just a little short of murder, and only sends his victim into hospital, he is punished, in three cases out of four, as if for an assault. Yet it is quite certain that no man, unless in fear of his life, resorts to the knife without the intention of inflicting severe, if not fatal, injuries ; and the habit is one which spreads like a pestilence. Every case in which the knife is used or drawn should either be sent to the Sessions, or punished inexorably with the maximum penalty allowed to the magistrates. That severe punishments defeat their own end is a sound maxim, but only when punishments are plainly disproportioned to the offence. A summary sentence of six months, or, after a jury's verdict, of two years' imprisonment, would barely meet the public and healthy horror of this offence, and less than that is simply offering a premium on the use of the knife. So, too, with the incessant attacks ou the police. There are districts in London where the whole male popula- tion seems to be set against the police, and every man who can catch' a policeman in difficulty avails himself of his opportunity to commit an assault. So long as they confine themselves to their fists, the police are pretty well protected by the law. But the roughs, it is well known, when collared by the police, always kick, and always kick in one way, with the double intention of paralyzing the officer for pur- suit, and injuring him for life. In this they usually succeed, and but for the spurious decorum of the reporters, these cases, which occur every day, would horrify London. Yet they are treated as ordinary police assaults, and an attempt equal in malignity to murder is visited with two months' imprisonment. We do not wish to see the police always protected, even when in the wrong. In low neighbourhoods, they are often tempted to be brutal, and we by no means wish to see a fair stand-up resistance made excessively dangerous. But the acts of which we complain are as much condemned by the laws of the "Ring" as by those of civilization, and ought to be visited with penalties sufficient to make " spoiling a Peeler" as heavy an offence as a theft, or an unsuccessful attempt to murder. We shall be told that the act is done in the heat of passion. So is murder, but that is not held an excuse, and it is a well-known fact that in their most evil moments these ruffians remember their exact liability to the law, and the fellow who "goes in for a month" as an exhibition of pluck, will not "go in" for six.
The English principle in estimating the comparative importance of crimes against the person is to consider both the motive and the extent of the injury. We do not punish attempts at murder like murder, as many theorists would, nor do we punish casual homicide hie murder, as the Jewish law did. But in these cases, motive and effect combine to demand severe punishment. A man must premeditate vitriol-throwing, or get his knife open with an effort, or kick the policeman with a dis- tinct aim, before he can commit any of these crimes, while the effect of them is only just short of murder. It is as attempts to murder, and not as assaults, that they should be tried and punished. The present system, by making no distinction between a blow on the head and a stab, an 'ordinary kick and a kick intended to " spoil," vitriol-throwing and the throwing of stones, offers a direct premium on the more torturing, and therefore more effectual, mode of in- flicting injury.
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