"I have sat," said he, "for------," as I quote from memory I sha'n't say how many, "years upon the bench, and I never yet met an honest man with long hair. The worst feature in your case is your ringlets. There is something so disgusting to me in the odious and abominable vice you have indulged in, that I feel myself warranted in applying to you the heaviest penalty of the law."
The miserable man, we are told, fell upon his knees, confessed his delinquency, and, being shorn of his locks in the presence of a crowded court, his fine was remitted, and he was liberated.
Now, perhaps, you will suppose that all this is a mere matter of invention. On the faith of an honest man I assure you it is not. I have retrenched considerably the pathetic eloquence of the magistrate, and I have left altogether untouched the poor tailor's struggle between pride and poverty--whether, on the one hand, to suffer the loss of his half-crown, or, on the other, to submit to the desecration of his _entire_ head. We hear a great deal about a law for the rich, and another for the poor; and certainly in this case I am disposed to think the complaint might not seem without foundation. Suppose for a moment that the prisoner in this case had been the Honourable Augustus Somebody, who appeared before his worship fashionably attired, and with hair, beard, and moustache far surpassing in extravagance the poor tailor's; should we then have heard this beautiful apostrophe to "the croppies," this thundering denunciation of ringlets? I half fear not. And yet, under what pretext does a magistrate address to one man, the insulting language he would not dare apply to another? Or let us suppose the rule of justice to be inflexible, and look at the result. What havoc would Sir Peter make among the Guards? ay, even in the household of her Majesty how many delinquents would he find? what a scene would not the clubs present, on the police authorities dropping suddenly down amongst them with rule and line to determine the statute length of their whiskers, or the legal cut of their eye-brows? Happy King of Hanover, were you still amongst us, not even the Alliance would insure your mustachoes. As for Lord Ellenborough, it is now clear enough why he accepted the government of India, and made such haste to get out of the country.