City of London Quotes
Let there be convenient cages for the committing of unruly vagrants in every ward.
London City Ordinance, Late 16th Century
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Manava Dharma Shastra. This text is a part of the Hindu Holy Texts. Hindus believe that Manu was a prophet whose text is revealed or inspired.
This law had an interesting unanticipated effect. Since most prisoners were assigned work outside the jail in different locations, there were not enough guards to watch them all so most reported to their work assignments as if they were going to a job and returned to the jail after work. The prisoners were paid wages by private employers and the first dollar a day they earned went to the State for their expenses. However, the prisoners got to keep the rest. The system seemed to work very well, however the crimes were relatively minor ones. In modern times, as a practical matter, almost no one gets jailed for these offenses any more.
This interesting historical quotation illustrates the fact that in almost every American generation there are those who believe that society has gone too far in protecting the rights of criminal suspects at the expense of law and order in the general society. This is nothing new. This is a classic argument given by those who would deny a defendant the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The belief that an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police is refuted by the many cases of innocent men being convicted by evidence they have given in the belief that they were innocent, and served long jail sentences only to later be proved by DNA evidence that they could not possibly have been guilty. Since Nott’s day, society has not only found many cases where honest error was made by the police or prosecutors, but many where there was venal prosecutorial misconduct and defendants were jailed even though the authorities were aware of evidence of innocence and kept it secret. There have been a number of these cases where a defendant was on death row and about to be executed when it was found he was innocent. Probably there have been men wrongly executed. See {629444} for a probable example.
This quotation is surprising to many because the National Association of Evangelicals is a very conservative organization which is usually at the right wing of political and social issues. However, religions are generally more complex with nuanced positions compared to political parties. On the issue of Prisons, the National Association of Evangelicals is at the left wing of the political spectrum.
The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, but the modern city named London has since grown far beyond the City of London boundary. The City is now only a tiny part of the metropolis of London, though it remains a notable part of central London. Administratively, it forms one of the 33 local authority districts of London; however, the City of London is not a London borough, a status reserved for the other 32 districts (including London's only other city, the City of Westminster). It is also a separate ceremonial county, being an enclave surrounded by Greater London, and is the smallest county in the United Kingdom.
