WHO IS THE CRIMINAL?

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2373, 14 August 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHO IS THE CRIMINAL?

A ragged, shivering, little boy was brought before a magistrate for stealing a loaf of bread from a grocer's window. The grocer himself was the .informer. Tho judge was about to pass sentence on the little'wretch, .when a "kind 'lawyer' offered the following considerations in 'mitigation of the offence: "The child/!; h.&said, "is the eldest of a miserable group,. The mother is an incorrigible sot; their father : lies low in a drunkard's grave. This morning, when tlie 'act.was the mother lay 'drunk' upon the floor, and her children wore crying around her/qr bread. The elder boy, ypable to bear t'lich misery -.any longer, rushedfrom the hovel, resolved to obey, that paramount law of nature which-teaches us the principle of self : preservation, even in disregard of the, law of .the land." He seized the penny loaf from the grocer's window and returned jo that wretched home, spread the-unex-pected morsel before" his hungry brothers,-and bade them 'eat and live'.' He did:not eat himself, No. Con' s'ciousness of the crime, and fears of detection, furnished a wore engrossing feeling thsn'that of hunger. ..The last morsel was scarcely swallowed before the officer of justice entered the door, The little thief was pointed out by the grocer, and he was conducted before the public tribunal. In the midst of such misery as this, with, the motive of this little criminal before us, there is something to soften the heart of man, though I deny not that the aqt is a penal offence. " But the tale is by no means told. This little circle, now utterly fallen and-forlorn, is the wreck of a family once prosperous, temperate, frugal, industrious and happy. The father, strange as it may seem, was once a professor of religion, The very first drop of that accursed tincture which conducted him through the path of corruption to the grave, was handed to him by this very grow, who now pursues the child of his former victim for penny loaf. The farm became encumbered; the community turned its back upon the miserable victim of intemperance; the ohuroh expelled him from the communion: the wife sought in the same tremendous remedy for all distracting care, an oblivion of her domestic misery. Home became a hell, whose only outlet was the grave. " ill the aggregate of human wretchedness, was. produced by this very grocer. He-has murdered the father, he has brutalized the tho mother,- he hag.beggared the childrenj he has taken possession of the farm, and "now prosecutes the child for stealing a loaf to keep his brothers from starving! " But all this is lawful and right; that is, it is according to law. He has stood upon his license, The theft ef a penny loaf by- a starving boy where bis,-father laid down his last farthing for rum, is a penal offence!"— The Bible'Stahdard.