IT IS TAKING the authorities an unconscionable time to bring
the ridiculous affair of the discus-throwing lady to a sensible conclusion. The Director of Public Prosecutions hasn't made up his mind and the police are still fussing about. I have been looking up the reports of an earlier occasion when a controversy on shop-lifting revealed the law as something less than majestic. Some opposition MPs brought in a Bill in 1813 to reduce the penalty, for stealing from a shop, from hanging to transporta- tion for life. The Attorney-General, for the Government, opposed the measure, pointing out that the Chief Justice had expressed the opinion that crime was on the increase, owing to misguided humanitarian activity. All the judges, in fact, were against the change, and their opinions ought to weigh strongly, in such an issue.
On a free vote, the Bill got through the Commons, and was introduced in a mild speech by Holland in the Lords. It was violently attacked by the Lord Chancellor. Surely, the Lord Chancellor, said, it must be obvious to any man of common sense that it must be an encouragement to commit a crime if the penalty was reduced, so that the criminal knew that instead of being hanged for committing it he would merely be transported ! But what carried the day against the reformers was a passionate appeal from the Chief Justice himself, who asserted that 'On the existence of this law, as it now stands, depends the security of all the retail trade of the country.'
Ah, me. . . .
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