1827.] 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH. 



THE Divorce bill, in the case of Miss Turner, has passed through both 

 houses of Parliament in the last month. This proceeding winds up the 

 measure of compensation, which, as it was most richly due, it has given 

 us great pleasure to see dealt out, to the exploit of the two Messrs. Wakefield ; 

 and those persons have now nothing left to do, except to congratulate them- 

 selves on the extraordinary leniency of their sentence ; to wear out their 

 respective terms of imprisonment with such salutary studies and reflections 

 as may guard them against falling into similar difficulty a second time ; 

 and, finally, if experience can make them wise, as soon as possible after 

 their liberation, to quit a country, in which their names, long before that 

 period arrives, will have been forgotten, but in which they never can be 

 revived but to become the subjects of animadversion and contempt. Be- 

 cause there are limits within which even the least worthy or scrupulous 

 members of society, in thought and Reeling, are accustomed (and compelled) 

 to confine themselves ; men of integrity and principle hold the gamester, 

 who conceals his skill in order to win the money of his antagonist, a cha- 

 racter unfit for their association ; but all the world concurs, that the fellow 

 who passes these bounds of villainy, and slips a card, or substitutes false 

 dice, for the purposes of plunder, shall be kicked, as a thief and a gambler, 

 out of doors. The adventurer who can plead even the vulgar excuse of a 

 *' passion" for the person of my daughter, and marries her against my con- 

 sent his conduct cannot be justified ; the man who simulates a passion 

 for a woman which he does not feel, in order to obtain possession of her 

 wealth, is guilty of a sordid act, and an act of disgraceful moral wrong; 

 but the ruffian who, by force or direct fraud, inveigles my daughter from 

 my house who accomplishes this object, not even by a misrepresentation 

 of his own feelings, or desires, or intentions, but by forging the authority 

 t)f those relatives or protectors, whose directions she lawfully and unhesi- 

 tatingly recognizes as commands that man is as essentially a swindler and 

 a robber as the fellow who knocks at the door of my house in my absence 

 from home, and obtains possession from my servants of my horse, my 

 silver spoons, or my gold watch ; his is an imposition against which I look 

 to the Old Bailey to secure me ; and to that tribunal, as a felon who has 

 robbed me not as a fellow-citizen who has injured I hand him over 

 accordingly. 



That this is the view, and the only fit view which can be taken of the 

 conduct of Mr. Wakefield and his brother, we conceive can scarcely 

 admit of doubt. The common principle which, in all questions of " obtaining 

 property," distinguishes the criminal act of " fraud," or " false pretence," 

 from the contraction of a civil " debt," applies to their case directly and en- 

 tirely. The law permits a man, in many transactions of common dealing 

 (that is, it refuses for such a course to proceed criminally against him) to use 

 misrepresentation to those with whom he deals, as far as his own objects or 

 intentions are concerned ; but it hangs the same man without mercy, or 

 at least sends him as a robber to Botany Bay, the moment he compasses his 

 fraud by assuming the character, or counterfeiting the authority, of a third 

 person. If a swindler purchases plate or diamonds from a goldsmith , upon 

 the most flagrant mis-statement of his own ability or intention to pay for 

 them, still the law calls this a peril against which the dealer's own caution 

 may protect him, and the purchaser has only incurred a civil debt ; but if 



M.M. New &nev VOL. IV. No. 1 9. I 



