JABEZ BALFOUR. T HE sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude on
Jabez Balfour is a heavy one, being practically, for a man of his years, imprisonment for life; but few will feel in their hearts that it is an unjust or severe one. He did not swindle on impulse or under pressure of need, but systematically, artistically, in the hope of making a fortune, or at least of living in luxury during the whole of his life. An experienced Judge once said to the present writer that in his judgment forgery was the least forgivable of crimes, because the forger must always be intelligent, always sober at the moment of crime, and always fully aware that he was robbing the blind. Jabez Balfour was, when he committed the offences for which he was sen- tenced on Thursday, an exceptionally intelligent man, a perfectly sober one, and a man with quite enough know- ledge of the classes he plundered to know that the source of his security was their blindness. He might, as far as the feebleness of his victims was concerned, as well have stolen coppers out of a blind man's tray. Besides, the moral question is not the only one in the matter. Grant that Jabez Balfour was no worse than any ordinary thimble-rigger, and still society has a right to defend itself from any grave dangers ; and if its happiness and security are threatened on a great scale, it has a right to strike hard in self-defence. That is the justification, the full justification, of capital punishment in cases of treason or mutiny, though the traitor may be in character a Lord Derwentwater, or in conduct a man like the leader of the mutiny at the Nore. We cannot have enterprise im- peded, business degraded, and innocent families ruined by the shoal, in order that men like Jabez Balfour and his accomplices may fatten, even though it would be possible to pick out worse men than they. It is easy to talk of scapegoats, but society has no divine insight, and can only punish those whom it can catch and can prove to be legally guilty. There are scapegoats in all the crimes which demand a group for their perpetration, and the community is fortunate when it can catch the chiefs or cut down the pivot-man upon whose brain the evil scheme has turned. Very often it cannot ; but that does not alter its right to punish those whom it can reach. There may be no moral right to punish at all, the evil and the good being alike playthings of a blind Fate ; but human beings, if they reject that monstrous theory, can only use the intelligence they have, and are certainly guiltless if they intend justice, give fair-play in the way of defence, and do not demoralise themselves by inflicting penalties in excess alike of the offence and the danger. To our minds, the one objection to the present sentence is its comparative uselessness. The next man who wishes to play the same audacious game will not be deterred by Jabez Balfour's fate. He will say that the criminal lived many years in luxury ; that it took the whole power of the British Government exerted in earnest and persistently to arrest him ; and that he, the imitator, would hide himself much more carefully, or being traced would leave this world at once to try his fate in another. Jabez Balfour must have known perfectly well the fate of many men like himself, and one swindler at least in England was actually encouraged by his example to make a final daring coup, and like him fly from the penalties he had incurred. The plain truth is that our modern habits of working through associations, of doing everything on a be- wildering scale, and of so perfectly keeping accounts, that even when they are produced only trained ex- perts can understand them, encourage swindling on the largest scale, while multiplying greatly the chances of impunity. How are a thousand simple folk, starving on 21 per cent., to detect the artistic fraud upon which the plausible promoter, who promises 20 per cent., relies for his ill-gotten profit ? They can distrust the man who cants ? Yes ; and the next thief will be a man who re- pudiates cant, who avows that he desires luxury, if not vice ; but assures the victim that if he will only trust him he can make 20 per cent. for him without a shadow of risk. People talk as if it were always the hypocrites who succeed in plundering the people • but any experienced broker knows that it is often men Of a very different class, —men who do not profess even respectability, but who do profess, and sometimes possess, financial skill. What we want is some method of stopping such men in mid career ; and it is not to the credit of the sagacity of the country that an effective check on company-making and company- management has not long since been provided. We do not believe it is impossible in the least. It would be easy, for instance, if Parliament chose to turn the accountants, who are now as important as solicitors or barristers, into a rigidly close profession, bound by certain rules of honour, and in return for the monopoly thus secured, which would be of great pecuniary value, to place them under severe liabilities, both professional and legal. An auditor who passed a suspicious account should be liable to professional ruin, as a solicitor is for embezzlement ; and if he had reason to believe it a false account, should be tried and sentenced as accessory to a fraud. It will at once be said that you would get no good auditors ; but there is no force in the objection. You can get anything in this country if you grant pay and status, and the in- ability of auditors to ascertain facts is merely a pretext under which they shield reluctance to abandon profitable work. They have only to question relentlessly, and resign if they are not answered. One or two resignations of auditors publicly announced and commented on would have prevented all the public losses in the Balfour con- cerns, by making acute persons averse to placing deposits in the hands of their managers, and by preventing the fictitious sales and valuations through which most of the actual stealings appear to have been carried on. They would, moreover, immensely embolden the honest Director, who exists in almost all Companies, but who, when he suspects anything wrong, has a trick of resigning in silence on the ground of his many engagements. The obligations of the Chairman, who is a paid officer, should be made as severe as those of the auditor, and between them they could arrest at once any doubtful proceeding of the Board. Profes- sional experts could suggest, we doubt not, even stronger checks, the truth beino.° that the obstacle to reform is not the practical one that the prevention of fraud is impos- sible, but the feeling of business men that they had rather tolerate occasional fraud, by which they do not themselves suffer, than allow of so much interference either from Government or from scientific and controlled accountants. They want to run risks if they like, and make strokes when they please, and they think that strict auditors would prevent them. Sometimes they would, no doubt, and so long as business men are dealing with their own money, we understand their argument, and in part accept it ; but the State has to care for the millions of the blind. It is well that small investors should invest their small capitals in enterprise, fair that they should have a chance of business profits, beneficial that their money should not lie in old stockings; but such people need a protection which they do not receive. A. hundred brigands like Jabez Balfour will read the account of his sentence and go on with their brigandage, deeming the risk amply compen- sated by their luxury and excitement. We want to tie a rope not round their necks, but round their ankles.
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