difficulty of obtaining redress in case of any infraction of the Law by the Police.

The poorer classes never attempt it; a brief experience has proved to them its fruitlessness, and the hopelessness of attaining to the truth; they bear the insolence of office in silence, but not without heart-burning; and when the higher classes on some rare occasions are brought into collision with the Police, they are astonished, petrified to find that even for one of them justice is difficult. That a coalheaver should have his head broken and himself be imprisoned for the assault; well, that is an accident that will sometimes occur, good order must be kept, the Police are a praiseworthy body of men, it is not only troublesome, it is ungrateful, to inquire too closely into these matters: but that a clergyman should thus have the tables turned on him, and find himself charged on solemn oath with being drunk and violently assaulting an officer with a stick, this naturally amazes an innocent clergyman, it astonishes his friends, it excites the Morning Chronicle, the Secretary of State is stirred up, and the matter inquired into and redressed.

The main difficulties arise from the esprit de corps that must always exist in an organised body, and still more from the tendency that frequent appearance in the Courts of Justice as a witness has to blunt a nice sense of the obligation of an oath. It is a sense of the dangers attending an esprit de corps that has made the civilians of England so excessively, and yet so justly, sensitive to any encroachment on the part of the army. It is a feeling remarkably strong in the Police Force, and we regret to observe occasional symptoms that even the Police Magistrates do not always rise above it. Officials must bear one another out; it is a mutual service which saves much inconvenience. The system might be illustrated by some awkward cases of hard swearing, and one or two in which a Policeman having been proved guilty of a serious crime, it was found impossible to apprehend him. Had he been any

body else, no corner in the world could have concealed him; but being a Policeman-his face, his habits, and his haunts, all familiar to his brothers-they quietly pronounce him non est inventus,' and he is not heard of again.

As to the other point, it is usual, in a Police-court especially, to prefer the oath of an officer to that of another man, and, doubtless, a magistrate who, when oath is opposed to oath, can judge only by deportment, will often decide justly in his favour; but this ought not to be because he is a Policeman, as some of our Justices seem to think; on the contrary, this fact is certainly something against his entire truthfulness. It may seem harsh to say so; but, in a case of difficulty, it is undoubtedly true that, other things being equal, the oath of a Policeman is entitled to less credence than that of a private man. He is more callous. Let any one go into a Criminal Court and contrast the evidence of a man newly admitted to the force with that of a veteran. The former swears like a common man, is not always sure, may make trifling discrepancies, does not remember exactly, may be confused by the opposite counsel, and descends with shaken nerves among the contemptuous smiles of his companions. Observe the "experienced officer," who takes his place; he is thoroughly honest, and would be bona fide hurt and astonished at any imputation of perjury; but he feels that the case depends on him-he knows the man at the bar for an old thief-he has not a doubt he is guilty, and he has no notion of letting him escape. Observe how well he knows the "pinch" of the case-how clear, how irresistible his evidence is on that point-how exactly he recollects every fact-how perfectly free he is from doubt or hesitation; his evidence has no hazy margin, every line is sharp and distinct; he tells you the exact words used, the exact hour, the exact amount of light, never varies, never forgets, and all with a steady leaning, whose value only the experienced can appreciate. Are there two

witnesses, one for the prosecution, and one for the defence, and both drunk; listen to his way of putting it. "Was the prosecutor drunk?-A little fresh, sir." "Was John Smith, for the defence, drunk?-Far gone in liquor, sir," with a shake of the head worthy of Lord Burleigh; "far gone in liquor." If part of a truth come out, it gives him no anxiety that the remainder is in favour of the prisoner. Cross-examination falls off him like rain from oilskin. He descends happy in his own self-approval and in that of his superiors. He is more than ever a valuable officer; and though the judge estimates him exactly and the bar too to the back benches, they know the man is guilty, and the jury who don't know have great confidence in Sergeant A 45. And he has told the truth in the main; but the truth stuffed a little at the chest, and padded a little at the sides, and squeezed in the waist, and made presentable. There is little or no harm done in such a case as this, except to the Policeman himself; but his conscience gets blunted by a long experience of this sort, the limits between truth and falsehood grow less clear to him; and where his own character, or even his own reputation for sagacity and accuracy are involved, he will not always shrink from a direct lie. He requires a strong check; and the punishment for perjury in a Policeman, replete, as the crime is, with mischief to the community, ought always to be administered with the fullest severity of the Law. It has a frightfully demoralizing effect, if a man of the lower classes finds himself confronted with a Policeman, the latter swearing falsely, and believed, and his own true statement scouted.

524

THACKERAY ON SWIFT.*

PROBABLY the main reason why such contradictory views of the character of Swift have been given to the world is, because he was himself so different a man at different times of his life. Those who saw him in the height of his prosperity, holding by the pure force of character and genius a foremost place in society, knit in close friendship and companionship with the most eminent men of his day, with scope for his large love of power, "dictating," in Johnson's phrase, "the politics of the English nation," an equal among equals, with free play for his vast abilities, and a worthy audience for the unrivalled wit and humour of his conversation, these might call him as even the cold-tempered Addison did, “the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age ;" others, who saw him only in his later days, banished from those he most loved, stript by death of the object of his deepest affections, broken down by illness and disappointment, morose, uncertain, liable to break into sudden fits of fury, with failing memory and feeble mind, a prey to avarice, a melancholy spectacle of fallen greatness dragging his miserable years to the grave, might easily, with the aid of a little native malice of disposition, draw such a picture of him as Lord Orrery has furnished.

Strong as is the main thread of identity that runs

* This brief Essay was one section of a notice of Mr. Thackeray's English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, contributed by Mr. Roscoe to The Inquirer of August 22d, 1853. Imperfect as it is, it was, I know, the result of much careful study of Swift's life and writings; and is, I think, worth preservation in a permanent form.- Editor.

through his whole nature, yet the opposite tendencies of it are displayed so separately and so completely, that his character hangs in the air of controversy like that fabled shield whose sides of different metal kindled the disputes of combatants who approached it by opposite roads. In the course of his life the balance of his character was utterly reversed; the qualities that once shone brightly, sank into darkness, and their opposites rose from the illmaintained control to which they had been subjected into the place of unopposed dominion. Such a change, however, in a man, though it gives room for abundant contradiction in biographers, does not necessarily make it more difficult to read his whole character; the very capacity for so striking a change is in itself an important trait. It indicates force, but particularly it indicates the very opposite of a tempered and harmonized nature; it indicates fierce, impetuous, energetic elements pressing each for a full swing, and if restrained at all, bound into coerced juxtaposition, not harmony, by the rigorous repression of a strong will, and apt, when the restraints of such a will are sapped by age, or neglected in sullen apathy, to fly abroad in the wildest disorder.

It stands written in the records of Trinity College, Dublin, that it was speciali gratiá, by special favour, that the young Swift obtained his first degree. This was because the necessitous student, greatly dependent on his University success, had formed a strong opinion against the prevailing system of Logic (which Martinus Scriblerus afterwards introduced to more general admiration), and utterly declined to peruse Smeglesius, Bergersdicius, and every analogous class of authors. In consequence of his remissness in this respect, he was plucked on his first going up; yet he presented himself on the next occasion with Smeglesius, and all his et ceteras, as rigidly neglected as ever. His friends, finding he would not swim for himself, were obliged to pull him through; and this was the way the authorities managed to reconcile lenity