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Rocks at Grêve au Lançon.
with reasonable caution not to be washed off by an unusually high wave, an accident which has happened. It was near there that the unfortunate Express mail-steamer was lost on a fine morning, the 20th of September, 1859. It was this ill-omened vessel which carried over Louis Philippe to Newhaven, in 1848, in a gale of wind. Beyond there is the beautiful seclusion of St. Brelade’s bay, with the oldest church of the island in one corner of it, and beyond the next point and Noirmont, the still more beautiful, and still more secluded, Portelet bay. At Noirmont point, the coast beauty ceases, and the view of St. Aubin’s bay closes the exhibition. On its further horn appears, looking well in the distance, the town of
ST. HELIER’S.
“Hull, hell, and Halifax,” have been for a long time quoted as the three most disagreeable places in the world, or out of it. We have come to the conclusion that the second of these words is a corruption of St. Heliers. It seems inconceivable that the odour of sanctity should ever have embalmed this most corrupt of towns. St. Helier was a hermit inhabiting a cell, difficult of access, on a rock behind Elizabeth Castle. Elizabeth Castle is connected with the mainland by a natural bridge, flooded at half-tide—a trap in which sometimes a tipsy soldier has been caught. Our Government really ought not to post soldiers in Jersey, as spirits are ruinously cheap, and the temptation too great. Jersey would be best defended by gun-boats, and by dismantling its fortresses, which are all commanded by heights. An enemy in command of the sea, would of course compel its garrison to surrender at discretion. The militia are sufficient to guard it against a Filibustering attack, like that of the Baron Rullecour, which was so gallantly frustrated, though at the sacrifice of his young life, by Major Pierson, not long before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
The town is chiefly inhabited by the Anglo-Saxons; the original Norman population keeping pretty much to the country. The immense prevalence of drunkenness proves that the national habit of England will scarcely be corrected by an infusion of cheap French wine, since French wine is as cheap in Jersey as in France. A walk in the streets of St. Helier’s would induce a passer-by to invoke a Maine liquor law in utter exasperation. The police appear to be few and far between, and in fact afraid to show themselves. The town appears to be in the hands of a sort of gaminocracy, or democracy of gamins, who commit with impunity all sorts of depredations on persons and property, and fill the streets night and day with yellings, whistlings, and all sorts of discordant noises. A Royal Commission—which will cost John Bull something, but Jean Jersey Bull nothing—has been lately sitting to consider the abuses of
JERSEY JUSTICE.
The criminal law of the island appears to be most strangely administered. Last summer, 1859, a girl found guilty of infanticide was bailed out for 10l. A year or two before, a man who shot his sister, and was tried for manslaughter, got off scot-free among the cheers of his party. More lately, two drunkards quarrelled in a gig, and one tried to seize the gun of the other, the other in the scramble shot him and wounded him; the wounded man got well, but the aggressor was sentenced to seven years’ transportation, and his property was confiscated to the lord of the manor, thus punishing his innocent family by a barbarous feudal law.
Some time ago, a poor little French boy was killed by a blow by a Jersey butcher-boy, whom