A TRUE STATE OF THE CASE OF BOSAVERN PENLEZ, WHO SUFFERED ON ACCOUNT OF THE LATE RIOT IN THE STRAND, In which the Law regarding these Offences and the Statute of GEORGE THE FIRST, commonly called the Riot Act, are fully considered.
—
BY
HENRY FIELDING, ESQ.,
Barrister at Law, and one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, and for the City and Liberty of Westminster.
A
TRUE STATE
OF THE
CASE
OF
BOSAVERN PENLEZ.
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IT may easily be imagined that a man whose character hath been so barbarously, even without the least regard to truth or decency, aspersed on account of his endeavours to defend the present government, might wish to decline any future appearance as a political writer; and this possibly may be thought by some a sufficient reason of that reluctance with which I am drawn forth to do an act of justice to my King and his administration, by disabusing the public, which hath been, in the grossest and wickedest manner, imposed upon, with relation to the case of Bosavern Penlez, who was executed for the late riot in the Strand.
There is likewise another reason of this reluctance with which those only who know me well can be certainly acquainted; and that is my own natural disposition. Sure I am, that I greatly deceive myself, if I am not in some little degree partaker of that milk of human kindness which Shakspeare speaks of. I was desirous that a man who had suffered the extremity of the law should be permitted to rest quietly in his grave. I was willing that his punishment should end there; nay, that he should be generally esteemed the object of compassion, and, consequently, a more dreadful example of one of the best of all our laws.
But when this malefactor is made an object of sedition, when he is transformed into a hero, and the most merciful prince who ever sat on any throne is arraigned of blameable severity, if not of downright cruelty, for suffering justice to take place; and the sufferer, instead of remaining an example to incite terror, is recommended to our honour and admiration; I should then think myself worthy of much censure, if having a full justification in my hands, I permitted it to sleep there, and did not lay it before the public, especially as they are appealed to on this occasion.
Before I enter, however, into the particulars of this man's case, and perform the disagreeable task of raking up the ashes of the dead, though of the meanest degree, to scatter infamy among them, I will premise something concerning the law of riots in general. This I shall do, as well for the justification of the law itself, as for the information of the people, who have been long too ignorant in this respect; and who, if they are now taught a little better to know the law, are taught at the same time to regard it as cruel and oppressive, and as an innovation on our constitution: for so the statute of George the First, commonly called the Riot Act, hath lately been represented in a public newspaper.
If this doctrine had been first broached in this paper, the ignorance of it would not have been worth remarking; but it is in truth a repetition only of what hath been formerly said by men who must have known better. Whoever remembers the political writings published twenty years ago, must remember that among the articles exhibited against a former administration, this of passing the Riot Act was one of the principal.
Surely these persons mean to insinuate that by this statute riots were erected into a greater crime than they had ever before been esteemed, and that a more severe punishment was enacted for them than had formerly been known among us.
Now the falsehood of this must be abundantly apparent to every one who hath any competent knowledge of our laws. Indeed whoever knows anything of the nature of mankind, or of the history of free countries, must entertain a very indifferent opinion of the wisdom of our ancestors, if he can imagine they had not taken the strongest precautions to guard against so dangerous a political disease, and which hath so often produced the most fatal effects.
Riots are in our law divided into those of a private and into those of a public kind. The former of these are when a number of people (three at the least) assemble themselves in a tumultuous manner, and commit some act of violence amounting to a breach of the peace, where the occasion of the meeting is to redress some grievance, or to revenge some quarrel of a private nature; such as to remove the enclosures of lands in a particular parish, or unlawfully and forcibly to gain the possession of some tenement, or to revenge some injury done to one or a few persons, or on some other such private dispute, in which the interest of the public is no ways concerned.
Such riot is a very high misdemeanor, and to be punished ery severely by fine and imprisonment.
Mr. Pulton