There is nothing extraordinary in the divergence of the views of Oliver Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson about the law and the poor. The good Doctor held the strong, sensible, Tory view that the system of treating the poor handed down to us by our forefathers was the right and proper system, that it was at least as good as any other system, that nothing anyhow could be learned from the hated foreigner, and that to pander to dreamers and busybodies, who found fault and wanted to alter things, was to start down the broad road of destruction. Oliver Goldsmith might have thought the same thing if he had been an Englishman, but he had the saving grace of Irish blood in his veins, and the true Irish have the power of looking beyond the present, and are often prophets and dreamers of dreams, seeing signs and wonders that we wot not of. "Sir!" said Dr. Johnson on another occasion, and when he began like that you knew that wisdom was about; "the age is running mad after innovations; all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation." It having been argued that this was an improvement--"No, sir (said he eagerly), it is not an improvement; they object that the old method drew together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators, they don't answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?" And Boswell and Sir William Scott nodded approval, just as you and I would have done or do now when some important old gentleman lays down the law about something of which he knows perhaps even a little less than we do and we are too courteous or cowardly to tell him that at the back of our minds we believe he is talking nonsense. If you would be gratified by a Tyburn procession, you may see one any day for yourself in Hogarth's print of the awful end of the Idle Apprentice. The ragged men, women and children bawling dying speeches about the streets, the criminal in the cart sitting beside his coffin, the chaplain exhorting the poor outcast, who, if he still courted popularity, scoffed openly, shouting to his friends on St. Sepulchre's steps where they stood with their nosegays to give their pal a last greeting. What a solemn impressive scene! All the way up Holborn there is a crowd so great that every twenty or thirty yards the cart is pulled up, and now someone brings out wine and the malefactor drinks a last toast. And when he reaches the fatal tree the ribald mob swears and laughs and shouts out obscene jests. Amid these noises a psalm is sung and the sound of it drowned in filthy tumult. So was the life of a fellow sinner brought to an end in the eighteenth century.