I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of Ruffian into Rough,
which has lately become popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this
paper; the rather, as my object is to dwell upon the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated
among us to an extent that goes beyond all unruffianly endurance. I take the liberty to
believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional Ruffian at large in the open
streets of a great city, notoriously having no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of
disquieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my lawful business, interfering
with no one, then the Government under which I have the great constitutional privilege,
supreme honour and happiness, and all the rest of it, to exist, breaks down in the
discharge of any Government's most simple elementary duty.
What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of this last September? That
the Police had 'AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN CAPTURING TWO OF THE
NOTORIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INVESTED THE WATERLOO
ROAD.' Is it possible? What a wonderful Police! Here is a straight, broad, public
thoroughfare of immense resort; half a mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-
lighted railway station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed by two popular
cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic; itself the main road to the South of London;
and the admirable Police have, after long infestment of this dark and lonely spot by a
gang of Ruffians, actually got hold of two of them. Why, can it be doubted that any man
of fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed with the powers of the Law,
could have captured the whole confederacy in a week?
It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy and Police - to the
conventional preserving of them, as if they were Partridges - that their number and
audacity must be in great part referred. Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at
large? He never turns his liberty to any account but violence and plunder, he never did a
day's work out of gaol, he never will do a day's work out of gaol. As a proved notorious
Thief he is always consignable to prison for three months. When he comes out, he is
surely as notorious a Thief as he was when he went in. Then send him back again. 'Just
Heaven!' cries the Society for the protection of remonstrant Ruffians. 'This is equivalent
to a sentence of perpetual imprisonment!' Precisely for that reason it has my advocacy. I
demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way, and out of the way of all decent people.
I demand to have the Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water
somewhere for the general service, instead of hewing at her Majesty's subjects and
drawing their watches out of their pockets. If this be termed an unreasonable demand,
then the tax-gatherer's demand on me must be far more unreasonable, and cannot be
otherwise than extortionate and unjust.
It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as one. I do so, because I know the two
characters to be one, in the vast majority of cases, just as well as the Police know it. (As
to the Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they know nothing about it but what the Police
choose to tell them.) There are disorderly classes of men who are not thieves; as railway-
