ADDRESS BY BARON VAUGHAN, Senior Judge in the GRAND ASSIZE of December 1930 in Winchester, to the GRAND JURORS prior to the trial opening.

Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, We are assembled by virtue of an extraordinary commission, which His Majesty has been advised to issue, for the purpose of exercising the criminal judicature of the country at a season of the year not usually devoted to such solemnities. In approaching the discharge of the grave and important duty confided to me, and to those with whom I have the honour to be associated, I must be permitted to express the peculiar satisfaction I derive from observing so full and truly respectable an attendance of the Grand Inquest at this alarming crisis. The alacrity with which you have, obeyed the call to assist in the suppression and punishment of acts of outrageous tumult, violence, and rapine, which have recently agitated your county, evinces a zealous attachment to the institutions under which we have the happiness to live, a firm determination to uphold them, and an earnest and anxious desire, both by your exertions and example, to cherish and promote a spirit of obedience to the laws. Every reflecting mind must be sensible to the necessity there exists for a speedy investigation of the offences imputed to the numerous prisoners in your calendar, in order that those whose innocence shall be made apparent, may be restored to liberty, and that the punishment of the guilty, treading close upon the heel of the offence, may induce the peaceable members of the community to rely with confidence upon the law of their country for the protection of their persons and property, and for the vindication of their wrongs.

An unlawful and riotous assembly acquires additional strength and courage every hour in which it is suffered to triumph unchecked. Its numbers increase, its demands are raised , and when once they have violated the law, experience teaches that the misguided are easily seduced into further acts of aggression. until they are at last betrayed into the commission of the most atrocious crimes. It is hardly necessary to speculate on the causes from whence that spirit of tumult has arisen which has recently disturbed so many parts of this kingdom.

It is said to have originated from the severe distress of the lower orders. To a certain extent no doubt it may be so, and every man possessed of the feelings common to our nature must deeply lament it, and endeavour to alleviate it (as you, gentlemen, no doubt have done, and will continue to do) by every means which Providence has placed within his power.

Ye it is to be feared that there are persons who, for the falsest purposes, have greatly exaggerated the pressure and extent of the evil, and instead of attempting to mitigate it, have used it as a means of carrying their own wicked designs into effect.

The object of such men is to dissolve that bond of mutual kindness which ought to unite the various classes of society for the common benefit of all, to represent the rich as the oppressors of the poor, and to instigate the uninformed to excesses which cannot ultimately succeed, and which if they could be at destructive to themselves as to those against whom they are directed. One of the means employed in order to captivate the labourer and to engage him in tumult and crime, has been to persuade him that the use of machinery occasions a decrease of the demand for personal labour, and a corresponding decrease of wages, and consequently that it must of necessity operate injuriously on the lower orders of the
people. But this is, as it seems to me, taking a very limited and erroneous view of the subject.

Threshing machines facilitate the operation of extracting the con from the ear, and perform it more effectually than manual labour, whereby the produce is increased, the expense of preparing and bringing it to market reduced, and consequently, the price of this essential article of life in some degree at least diminished. Besides, the same argument which justifies or recommends the destruction of the threshing machine would also apply to the abandonment of the use of the flail, the spade, the hoe, the axe, or any other, even the rudest instrument, by which agricultural labour was abridged or rendered more effective; and if this right were conceded to the agricultural labourer, what reason ran be assigned for denying the exercise of a similar right to those who are employed in the fabrication of cloth, linen, cotton, or any other article wrought in the various manufactures of the kingdom; and if all were to act upon these supposed rights and machinery to be prohibited altogether can any one doubt what fatal consequences must result to all the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing classes of this great kingdom. But admitting the low rate of wage to labourers in
husbandry to be a just and legitimate subject of complaint, will employment he procured by the ruin of the farmer, or wages be raised by the destruction of the property of those who are required to furnish the one, or to pay the other. I forbear to enter further into a question that it it not within our province as ministers of the law
to discuss. The office of the judge is to declare, expound, and execute the law.

It may be sufficient therefore to observe that it is the undoubted right of every subject of the kingdom to employ his capital and to conduct his business, whether engaged in agriculture, commerce, or manufacture in such a manner as he may think most conducive to his own interest unless where the wisdom of Parliament has controlled him to legitimate restriction. He has the unquestionable privilege of availing himself of his own discoveries, or by agreement or purchase, of the discovery of others, and no reason can be assigned why threshing – machines should not be protected by law as much as any other species of property. Nor is it easy to discern the difference, in moral turpitude, between the act of destroying the one for the purpose of advancing the private interests of the offender and the felonious taking and appropriation of it for his own use. Without discussing, therefore, any questions of political economy, which are beside the more immediate and direct object of our present inquiry and dismissing the further consideration of the question of how far the use of threshing machine bears with severity upon the agricultural labourers it must never be forgotten in this place that they are protected by express legislative enactments, to which I shall have occasion to advert more particularly hereafter.

If individuals have reason to complain of any violation of the law by which their personal liberty has been infringed, their personal security endangered or their private property injured, their curse is to appeal to the ordinary tribunals of their country for redress. If they feel aggrieved by a state of society which subjects them to privations or to injuries for which the law at present affords no remedy and which they persuade themselves they ought not in justice to endure, the Legislature alone is competent to reform the law if it works partial injustice or private wrong.

But it can not be tolerated in any country which professes to acknowledge the obligations of municipal law, that any man or body of men should be permitted to sit in judgment upon their own wrongs or to arrogate to themselves the power of redressing them. To suffer it would be to relapse into the barbarism of savage life, and to dissolve the very elements by which society is held together. I pass to the more direct object of a charge to a Grand Jury which is to assist them in the application of the law to such cases as may be expected to occur in the course of their deliberations. It therefore becomes my duty to offer to you some observations upon the present state of the criminal law with reference to the various bills of indictment which are likely to be laid before you.

The capital felonies will probably be reduced to four several heads.

2nd. The crime of arson;

3rdly, Robbery from the persons.

4thly Robbery or stealing in dwelling houses.

To which may be added other felonies, not capital, viz.

1st The sending of threatening letters;

2ndly, The destruction of or the damaging with intent to destroy or render useless threshing – machines, or any machine or engine employed in any manufacture.

In calling your attention to the current state of the law as it relates to the several offences to which I have alluded, I would make one general preliminary observation applicable to every class of them. Having carefully examined the deposition upon which the various commitments in the calendar are founded, there is reason to suppose that many of the offences imputed were committed, not by one or a few individuals, but by a number of persons congregated together and forming one general tumultuous assembly. Under such circumstances, the criminality would not be confined or attach
exclusively to the particular individual whose hand may have committed the felonious act.

Upon that subject I address myself with a warning voice in the language of friendly admonition and caution to all who may be or may become acquainted with what it now passing within these walls, to avoid the peril to which they may be exposed by heedlessly associating themselves with those by whose evil and wicked instigations they may be incautiously betrayed into crimes which can be expiated only by a sacrifice of life.