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discover the depredator, they concealed themselves [92] in the garden late one night, and awaited the result. By that means they succeeded in capturing the thief, a female, who, not suspecting their presence, had entered the garden, dug out some of the provisions, and was about to make off with her booty. In spite of desperate resistance, she was taken to the police station and there duly charged with larceny. Meanwhile her son, on hearing of his mother's incarceration, hastened to find her in her cell, and, after briefly consulting with her, he decided on entering a countercharge of assault and battery against both her captors. Whether or not this bold proceeding was prompted by the knowledge that the dispensing of justice in the magistrate's court was a mere game of cross-purposes, a cynical disregard of common sense and elementary equity, we cannot say; but the ultimate result fully justified this abnormal hardihood of filial championship. On the day of the trial, the magistrate heard the evidence on both sides, the case of larceny having been gone into first. For her defence, the accused confined herself to simple denials of the allegations against her, at the [93] same time entertaining the court with a lachrymose harangue about her rough treatment at the hands of the accusing parties. Finally, the decision of the magistrate was: that the prisoner be discharged, and the plundered goods restored to her; and, as to the countercharge, that the husband and wife be imprisoned, the former for three and the latter for two months, with hard labour! When we add that there was, at that time, no Governor or Chief Justice accessible to the poorer and less intelligent classes, as is now the case (Sir Henry T. Irving and Sir Joseph Needham having been respectively superseded by Sir William Robinson and Sir John Gorrie), one can imagine what scope there was for similar exhibitions of the protecting energy of British rule. As we have already said, during Mr. Froude's sojourn in Trinidad the "sleek, happy, and contented" people, whose condition "admitted of no improvement," were yet groaning in bitter sorrow, nay, in absolute despair, under the crushing weight of such magisterial decisions as those which I have just recorded. Let me add two more [94] typical cases which occurred during Mr. Mayne's tenure of office in the island. L. B. was a member of one of those brawling sisterhoods that frequently disturbed the peace
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