A YOUNG CIRCUMCISED RASCAL, EXETER, 1830

The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette had writers who clearly enjoyed insulting everyone equally,  not too often the rich and the powerful but often enough them too.

I am old enought to share their enjoyment. The most lively writing comes about when the writer is amusing himself and there is, perhaps, nothing more enjoyable than making odious comparisons.  The sense of freedom with which The Gazette's  court reporter hurled personal and no doubt hurtful comments on  all and sundry does not so much shock and anger as amuse me and I find it curious that writers nowadays have to, by the law of the land, avoid unkind words and phrases for fear of the knock on the door.    All the fun of the world has its dark side.  

I see, with amusement, the paradox of young (mostly) people on the qui vive for writers &c. who are not 'kind' and 'thoughtful' and 'correct' so that they can exercise their freedom of speech to pick a fight with them.  That's all fair enough,  -  but legislation?  

Freedom of speech, however, it seems to me, is an absolute and is the bedrock of a free society .  In any case, it is a freedom that will not let itself be banned.   

This was a court report for the 5th June 1830:

"On Saturday last, a Hebrew lad was summoned before the Mayor for attempting to emancipate himself from the thraldom of his father.

"The father stated that his son had formed various bad habits, which could only tend to utter ruin and in proof of the assertion handed in a written document purporting to be a charge for three pints of beer, two glasses of gin and two ditto of rum and water.

"When this Jew bill was brought into the house for the anxious parent to pay he was surprised to find that his son had been having such a jubilee and remonstrated.

"The young circumcised rascal pursued the same course and pleaded now before their worships excited  feelings as the cause of his drinking, his father and his mother having had a quarrel.

"Their worships rebuked him in a proper manner, and the lad promised to amend -  but at first he wished his father to set him up with 'a pound's worth of goods' and he'd never trouble him more.

"The court over-ruled the proposition and he went home to his mother."'`

I can forgive the racist undertones but I'm not sure I can so easily forgive the bad puns.