AN ENQUIRING MAGISTRATE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1460, 21 October 1878, Page 3

AN ENQUIRING MAGISTRATE.

It is not often that we iind a magistrate willing to place himsolf for a short Bpell in the position of a casual vagrant ia a workhouse and to break stones for six hours or so continually. Such a magistrate, however, we ("Lancaster Guardian," Aug. 10th) find in Mr Albert Simpson , of Elmhurst, near Garstang, Lancashire. Ho has had vagrants brought before him charged with not completing their task of breaking stones in the workhouse, and the plea of the majority of these men lias been that they were unable to do the work. Mr Simpson frankly tells us (in a a lettor to the Garstang Board of Guardians) that for a long time he saw no reason why the vagrants could not, or should net, do their allotted tasks, and he has been compelled to send them to prison. But the re currence of the complaints of the vagrants of not being able to do the work given them eventually struck Mr Simpson as peculiar, and he was impelled to try the experiment himself of breaking a "task" of stones. Mr Simpson, it appears, is not inexpert in the use of the hammer, but he found that he could not break the quantity of stones allotted to a vagrant in less time than five hours and a half—about half the time allowed to a vagrant. Further, when Mr Simpson had finished his task, he was " thoroughly exhausted," and his hands were "raw in many places and bleeding." After this experience, he could understand how it was that the vagrants who had been brought before him (and whom he had, as by law bound, sent to prisou) were unable to break the proper quantity of stones. Mr Simpson arrives at certain conclusions, all very just and very proper, no doubt; but the conclusion at which most plain people will arrive after reading his letter will be—that the system which allows such things is harsh, cruel, and abominable. How would it be, in further illustration of the hardness of vagrant labor, if the masters of a few workhouses and the members of a few Boards of Guardians were compelled to do the work Mr Simpson voluntarily did by way of education and change. Mr Simpson, in this matter, has proved himself to be preeminently a practical man and a just magistrate, and it is a pity we have not more magistrates like him.