Harsh sentences on juvenile delinquents and plebeian offenders under the Game Laws and Sunday Trading Act, the harrying of vagrants, the treatment of destitution as a crime, are a constant spur to _Punch's_ reforming zeal. The hard cases quoted from _The Times_ and many provincial papers include the flogging of a boy for accidentally killing a leveret; the trial of a starving woman for the crime of stealing a faggot worth a penny; the prosecution of two children, aged six and twelve, for picking two handfuls of peas while walking in a field through which there was a path, and the sending of the elder boy to gaol for fourteen days in default of payment of a fine of 6d. and 13s. costs; a sentence of six months' imprisonment for stealing a crab worth 1s. 6d.; the fining of a man 5s. by his vicar because his child, aged nine, had sold a halfpenny worth of sweets to another child on Sunday--which reminds _Punch_ of Herod and the Innocents. In 1841 Lord Brougham, in Parliament, during a discussion on prison discipline, stated that a man "had been confined ten weeks, having been fined 1s., with 14s. costs, because he was absent one Sunday from church." Then in 1846 we have the case of a woman charged with "exciting charity," though she had not solicited alms. As late as 1859 we read of a child of nine in Essex, sent to prison for fourteen days and whipped for stealing ½lb. of butter. Small wonder is it that _Punch_ was a fervent and convinced anti-Sabbatarian, or that he wrote in 1846: "The State does not trouble itself much with education in this country, but the most usual schools for the young and destitute are the prisons." The alternatives of fine or imprisonment heightened the evil, for while the poor delinquent went to gaol the well-to-do offender escaped. Brutal assaults on women were punished by a lenient fine, which the bully could generally pay; fraudulent tradesmen were not deterred from repeating their offences by a money penalty which they could easily afford; it was only the penniless pilferer who was sure of prison. In 1844 we find _Punch_ tracing incendiarism in Suffolk to the greed of the farmers in keeping wages down, and publishing Leech's famous cartoon "The Home of the Rick Burner." _Facit indignatio versum_: here is the picture of "The Fine Old English Gentleman of the Present Time"--in the middle of the Hungry 'Forties:-- I'll sing you a fine old song, improved by a modern pate, Of a fine Old English Gentleman, who owns a large estate, But pays the labourers on it a very shabby rate. Some seven shillings each a week for early work and late, Gives this fine Old English Gentleman, one of the present time. * * * * *