Hyde Park during the twenty years of peace, and no opportunity was lost to enhance the terror of the penalty, the firing party sometimes consisting solely of fellow-deserters, who were spared in consideration of the warning given by the ghastly body which their own bullets had pierced.[73] The newspapers record such matters with little ceremony, dwelling with greater relish on incidents of the cart's tail, of the pillory, or of Tyburn. The picketing of a soldier was indeed for a time a sufficient novelty to attract crowds,[74] but the interest in the process appears to have been short-lived. People were not squeamish in those days, and men would lay a wager to receive so many hundred lashes without flinching, as calmly as if it were to run so many miles or drink so many pots of ale. It is, however, noteworthy that both of the first of the Guelphic kings were prone to lighten the sentences of courts-martial, constantly reducing the number of lashes and remitting the penalty of death. Whether this was due to policy or humanity it is a little difficult to determine, for the populace certainly sympathised with deserters, and would help to rescue them, while there were "malicious persons" who were glad to denounce the severity of military punishments as a reproach against the Government.[75] I am, however, inclined to believe that both kings were inspired by the higher of the two motives, and should receive due honour for the same. The like, I believe, can hardly be said of the malicious persons above named, considering that the House of Commons had the scandalous evils of the London prisons before it in 1729, but left the whole work of reform to be done by John Howard in 1774.