A curious defence was put forth on Monday for a
clerk who had embezzled money to the amount of £100,—namely, that he did not embezzle it for any selfish or vulgar purpose, but only to get the means of pursuing his researches into electricity. He was, it seems, a well-educated man with a hobby of his own for electrical investigations, and it was intimated by his counsel that this was so meritorious, that it might justify the Magistrate in dealing with the offence leniently under the First Offenders Act. Alderman Sir Whittaker Ellis refused to do this, pointing out that the defendant was an adult and a well-educated man, and could not be properly brought under the provisions of that Act. Nevertheless, he only sent the embezzler to prison for a month with hard labour, which looks rather as if he gave some weight to the consideration that the defendant had only stolen for a scientific purpose. It seems to us that an educated man who steals that he may ride his hobby the more effectually, is deserving of more, not of less punishment, than a hungry man who steals to keep himself and family from starvation. What would be said of stealing a suit of clothes to go to church in ? Would it not be worse than the Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ? Yet stealing for the purpose of pursuing one's scientific studies has in it something of the same kind of hypocritical self- deception.
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