THE CASE OF THE CAROL.

The Chief Constable of Blackpool awoke yesterday to find himself famous. All his countrymen read with awe his sentence on the Christmas carol. For children to go carol-singing through the streets, he pronounces, is illegal; nay, more, it is injurious, morally and physically. To the burgesses of Blackpool their Chief Constable appeals that they should “discourage the practice.” Thus will the nocturnal quiet of Blackpool be preserved, her children, finding the fount of pennies run dry, be delivered from temptation to break the laws, and spared that moral and physical damage which is the fruit of peripatetic minstrelsy. Now, we have a sympathetic admiration for the Chief Constable of Blackpool, an officer, plainly, of courage and initiative, but we feel that the course of events will not follow this plan. That the carols which we are doomed to hear of nights are not sung “by a quire of squadron’d angels” is too true. Since the town waits made music beneath the windows of Mr. Matthew Bramble at Bath, such strains have been the torture of the sensitive and the jest of those who like familiar fun.

We know nothing of any peculiar agonies which Blackpool may have suffered, but it is probable that what the Chief Constable seeks to suppress is the common practice of children going from doorstep to doorstep, singly or in small parties, and after a verse or so of “Good King Wenceslas” banging at the door for hush money. In the coming weeks a patient householder may have the honour to subscribe several times over for one evening, so lavish is the supply of entertainment.

Cynics may declare that the custom has become an industry, an organised imposition, a system of blackmail; the Chief Constable of Blackpool may thunder of illegality, and assure us that if we would be free ourselves must strike the blow, but what would they have us do? A Victorian poet advised that a mild man’s remedy for the importunacy of an organ-grinder is to “go very quietly out and drop a button in the hat.” But we cannot thus deal with children. It would be at once brutal and ignominious, and we well know that it would be ineffective. Not thus should we escape from the perseverance of small boys and small girls. Men of high public spirit, no doubt, may take a strong line, warn the young singers in a majestic manner that they are breaking the laws of their country, Nature, and morality, and drive them penniless away. This, we confess, is the conduct of a good citizen, and as such we admire it, but it does not, if the Chief Constable of Blackpool will allow us to say so, seem very seasonable. It may be that to give these young extortioners pennies is bad for them, but to send them off as poor as they came will hardly be good for us. The politico-economic virtues are cold wear at Christmastime.

We sympathise indeed with the Chief Constable, who has, no doubt, an ear for music; we do not contemplate our own sufferings with equanimity, but we would rather suffer much bad carol-singing than reduce the wandering singers to the lowest terms of bylaws and regulations. We have little enough left in this country of any old festival of the people. These small fry piping at our doors of nights may be mercenary, may be vilely out of tune, but they are keeping Christmas in the way it has been kept for a thousand years and more. It may be bad for them physically, but we have also our doubts about Christmas pudding. It may be injurious to their morals, but we do not know that the state of winding a penny desperately is favourable to the growth of virtue. It may be against the law, but we do not want to think too much of Chief Constables at Christmas time.