Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

accused of doing. The prisoner had been got up, since I last had

the pleasure of seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and

straw bonnet. She reminded me of an elder sister of Red Riding

Hood, and I seemed to remind the sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom

she was attended, of the Wolf.

The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller, whether

this charge could be entertained. It was not known. Mr.

Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it were better known,

and that, if he could afford the leisure, he would use his

endeavours to make it so. There was no question about it, however,

he contended. Here was the clause.

The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted. After

which I was asked the extraordinary question: ‘Mr. Uncommercial,

do you really wish this girl to be sent to prison?’ To which I

grimly answered, staring: ‘If I didn’t, why should I take the

trouble to come here?’ Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable

evidence in detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten shillings,

under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days. ‘Why, Lord

bless you, sir,’ said the Police-officer, who showed me out, with a

great enjoyment of the jest of her having been got up so

effectively, and caused so much hesitation: ‘if she goes to

prison, that will be nothing new to HER. She comes from Charles

Street, Drury Lane!’

The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and I

have borne my small testimony to their merits. Constabular

contemplation is the result of a bad system; a system which is

administered, not invented, by the man in constable’s uniform,

employed at twenty shillings a week. He has his orders, and would

be marked for discouragement if he overstepped them. That the

system is bad, there needs no lengthened argument to prove, because

the fact is self-evident. If it were anything else, the results

that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who

will say that under a good system, our streets could have got into

their present state?

The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning the

Ruffian, may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as follows.

It is well known that on all great occasions, when they come

together in numbers, the mass of the English people are their own

trustworthy Police. It is well known that wheresoever there is

collected together any fair general representation of the people, a

respect for law and order, and a determination to discountenance

lawlessness and disorder, may be relied upon. As to one another,

the people are a very good Police, and yet are quite willing in

their good-nature that the stipendiary Police should have the

credit of the people’s moderation. But we are all of us powerless

against the Ruffian, because we submit to the law, and it is his

only trade, by superior force and by violence, to defy it.

Moreover, we are constantly admonished from high places (like so

many Sunday-school children out for a holiday of buns and milk-andwater)

that we are not to take the law into our own hands, but are

to hand our defence over to it. It is clear that the common enemy

to be punished and exterminated first of all is the Ruffian. It is

clear that he is, of all others, THE offender for whose repressal

we maintain a costly system of Police. Him, therefore, we

expressly present to the Police to deal with, conscious that, on

the whole, we can, and do, deal reasonably well with one another.

Him the Police deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

flourishes, and multiplies, and, with all his evil deeds upon his

head as notoriously as his hat is, pervades the streets with no

more let or hindrance than ourselves.

CHAPTER XXXI – ABOARD SHIP

My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human-

Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last reported of them,

but have kept me continually on the move. I remain in the same

idle employment. I never solicit an order, I never get any

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