y, before child life in it will be what it ought to
be.

1. The shops of England abound with poisons specially prepared for
children. "Syrups" and "foods" as unsuitable for a baby's stomach, and as
fatal, as a bullet would be to its brain or a knife to its throat, are
sold to all comers. In some cities, coroners and medical men have a
hundred times denounced things in common use as poison to babies; and the
Press a hundred times has carried their denunciations into every street,
with absolutely no effect on the extent of their use. Boiled bread,
corn-flour, sago, "tops and bottoms," these soon make a strong, week-old
baby a sight to see.

2. Still further. Where inhuman parents by such death-dealing agents have
done their work, coroner's juries join hands against the child with the
infants' food and syrup shops, and make fatal suffering quite safe to
inflict. Almost the only persons who commit infant slaughter whom these
tribunals send to trial are those who in their tender mercies commit it
hastily and sharply. For long drawn weeks of agony in dying, inflicted by
sham foods, their custom is to request the coroner to pronounce a censure.
The coroner then congratulates the parents on the "mercifulness" of the
jury. So the grand prerogative of mercy, even, is made to serve against
wronged children.

3. But it plays its hypocritical part not at inquests alone. After a
disclosure as to conduct to a child which would have made true men
indignant, too many magistrates mildly say, "We have taken a merciful
view, and shall let you off this time." "Mercy," is this! Mercy! to whom?
To the man's suffering child? To the suffering child of other like-minded
men in the locality? The magistrate who cures a brute of his brutality,
that is the merciful magistrate--merciful to the culprit, to the country,
and to the child! Parliament has passed, and the Queen has sanctioned, a
new law, which has well been called the Children's Charter. Yet a canting
woman before the bench, with the corner of her white apron and a tear, can
wipe it all out. Even a little cant on an idle man's lips--"no work to
do"--will make some J.P.'s disloyal to both Parliament and Crown.

If I happen to be speaking to a magistrate, let me say that no man can
show "mercy" to an offender save where he is himself the person offended.
That a magistrate should forgive a parent for making a baby's back bleed
is impossible. He may lack justice towards him; he may do that,