The effect of law, not law written in the Statute Book, but law practically enforced among the people, is to evolve a conscience. Not without deep true meaning was it said of old time “the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” For it is the law, by its pains and penalties, which educates the individual as to the obligations of morality and the duty of well-doing. But in New York the universal practice of permitting all manner of abominations to run, provided the regular fee was paid to the police, acted as a direct depravation of public morals in familiarising the worst people in the city with a moral standard which was in itself a negation of morality. A woman of the name of Flora Waters, who kept a café with waitresses in a disreputable quarter, formulated with the utmost precision her belief that she was doing right because her money was taken by the police:-- Q. You thought the business you were doing was not wrong? A. I thought it was all right when I paid, because they all said the money was going to---- Q. I only want to get her moral idea? A. Because they told me the wardman did not keep the money and it goes up higher, and it had to be that way, because it was not old in this country, that people that sold liquors could keep waiters; but I thought it was nothing wrong, and everybody told me the money went all through, and everybody knew how it was worked.--Vol. ii., p. 1,363. Here we have plainly and simply set out the inevitable consequence of any system of regulation. When the police sanction anything, it is no longer wrong to practise it. The police-court is the only Sinai of the Slum. Bad as the police were proved to be in many instances, they were gentlemen compared with some of the Justices. The fact that such foul creatures were permitted to sit on the judgment seat and deal out sentences to men and women, the worst of whom were better than their judge, is the most melancholy feature of the whole black, bad business. This is the innermost centre of the New York Inferno. Among the magistrates or police-court justices who figure conspicuously in this hideous drama, one Justice Koch appears pre-eminent. I prefer not to attempt to express the sentiments which are aroused by the spectacle of such a Justice dispensing justice. Miss Rebecca Fream, a mission-worker who had in vain endeavoured to secure some redress for the wrongs inflicted upon her poorer neighbours, was on one occasion ordered out of his court. She told the Lexow Committee:-- I turned to him, and I said, “Don’t worry yourself; is this what you call justice?” then I said, “May God pity the poor on the east side, for with half-drunken judges on the bench whom shall they look to for justice if God forsakes them; you were half-drunk yesterday when I applied for a summons, and to-day you are so drunk you can’t see out of your eyes.” Q. He made no effort to punish you for contempt of court?