Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
“In here there is a sulky chap.”
“Oh! then let us go on to the next.”
“But this is one his reverence is uncommon fond of,” said Fry, with a
sneer and a chuckle; so he flung open the door, and if the man had not
hung his head Susan would hardly have recognized in his uniform corduroy
and close-cropped hair the vulgar Adonis who had sat glittering opposite
her at table the last time they met.
After the interview which I have described, Susan gratified Fry by
praising the beautiful cleanliness of the prison, and returned, leaving
a pleasant impression even on this rough hide and “Uncle Tom” behind
her.
When she got home she found her patient calm but languid.
While she was relating her encounter with Robinson, and her previous
acquaintance with him, the knock of a born fool at a sick man's door
made them all start. It was Rutila, with a long letter bearing an ample
seal.
Mr. Eden took it with brightening eye, read it, and ground it almost
convulsively in his hand. “Asses!” cried he; but the next moment he
groaned and bowed his head. Her majesty's secretary's secretary's
secretary had written to tell him that his appeal for an inquiry had
traveled out of the regular course; it ought to have been made in
the first instance to the visiting justices, whose business it was to
conduct such inquiries, and that it lay with these visiting justices to
apply to the Home Office for an extraordinary inquiry if they found they
could not deal with the facts in the usual way. The office, therefore,
had sent copies of his memorial to each of the visiting justices, who at
their next inspection of the jail would examine into the alleged facts,
and had been requested to insert the results in their periodical report.
Mr. Eden sat up in bed, his eye glittering. “Bring me my writing-desk.”
It was put on the bed before him, but with many kind injunctions not to
worry himself. He promised faithfully. He wrote to the Home Office in
this style:
“A question of life and death cannot be played with as you have
inconsiderately proposed; nor can a higher jurisdiction transfer an
appeal to a lower one without the appellant's consent. Such a course is
still more out of order when the higher judge is a salaried servant of
the State and the lower ones are amateurs. This was so self-evident that
I did not step out of the direct line to cast reflections upon unpaid
servants. You have not seen what is self-evident--you drive me,
therefore, to explanations.
“I offered you evidence that this jailer is a felon, who has hoodwinked
the visiting justices and has deceived you. But between you and the
justices is this essential difference: they have been hoodwinked in
spite of their own eyes, their own ears, and contact with that mass of
living and dying evidence, the prisoners. You have been deceived without
a single opportunity of learning the truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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