A. No; there was one of the officers, and he turned and said, “By jee, I wouldn’t take that from anybody.” I said, “If you were in the same boat with him you would have to take it.” Chairman Lexow: Fine commentary upon the police-court procedure! The Witness: That is nothing; that is only a drop in the bucket.--Vol. iv., p. 4,484-5. The police-court judge seems in many cases to have been the pivot on which the whole horrible system of oppression revolved. It would need the pen of a Zola to describe adequately these shambles of the poor. There was the headquarters of the foul crew that flourished on perjury and grew fat upon using the forms of the law to frustrate its aims. It was the paradise of the professional bondsman, the blackmailer, and all the human vermin that thrive upon the misfortunes of their fellows. The worst lawbreakers of the precinct stood inside the rail beside the judge, browbeat and bullied the unfortunate accused, and practised every kind of extortion with impunity. The blackguard lawyer, hand-and-glove with the bandit policeman, found an even more detestable scoundrel than themselves upon the bench. The fiercest invectives of Juvenal would be too weak to do justice to these sinks of iniquity, in which honesty was a byword, innocence a laughing-stock, and the law merely a convenient pretext for levying blackmail. The Committee was constantly hearing of the abuses connected with these courts, but the inquiry closed before they could be taken seriously in hand. The infamy of the system of bail, which was worked to fill the pockets of the bondsmen, led to frequent comments. On one occasion the Chairman remarked-- That seems to me to be a point that has never been properly accentuated; the commission of the police justice and the general activity of that character of man is a very great item going to show their inefficiency. Blumenthal and Hochstein’s reputation was well known, and their insolvency was an established fact, and yet they went on bonds to the extent of thousands and thousands of dollars, and those bonds were even forfeited and not paid, and the men accepted again.--Vol. v., p. 4,490. In the Report they say:-- While it was impossible for your Committee to spend much time in considering police courts, enough is shown upon the record to justify the conclusion that a very important reason why the police have been able to carry on and successfully perpetrate their reprehensible practices, is that at least some of the police justices have apparently worked in sympathy and collusion with them.--Vol. i., p. 27. In the examination of a witness named John Collins, Mr. Moss said-- I think that the evils perpetrated by these judges, some of them, are even worse in their results than the evil practised by the police.