THE PENALTY OF TRESPASS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—Six of my fellow-creatures, of whom I had not until this day heard, by names Esther Hendra, Ellen Cossentine, Mary Bowden, Richard Brewer, Joseph Coppin, and George Bennett, are now languishing in Bodmin Gaol.
Their crime is that on Sunday afternoon, the 16th June, they were in a wood, the property of Sir Colman Rashleigh, through which a pathway runs, and which has been publicly used for upwards of seventy years. It is very probable that the prisoners during their walks (the male prisoners constituting one party and the female another, and each far apart from the other) diverged from the pathway to gather whortleberries.
Master Rashleigh, son of the proprietor, was also out for a walk, and whilst doubtless looking "from Nature up to Nature's God," saw those grave offenders, and in due course got them summoned before Colonel Peard—" Garibaldi's Englishman 1"— convicted, and sentenced to twenty-one days' imprisonment, without the option of a fine.
Brewer and Coppin have been in constant service for eleven and seven years respectively, are about eighteen years of age, and their employers speak highly of them. Bennett is a lad about fifteen years old, Ellen Cossentine and Esther Hendra are girls of eighteen, and Mary Bowden is a married woman far advanced in pregnancy. Not one of the six has previously been before a a magistrate.
There is but one feeling in all the district round about, viz., contempt for the manner in which justice has been administered.—
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