Various other considerations also operate in strengthening the hopes of acquittal; partly arising from the vast numbers who are discharged or acquitted at every Session of gaol-delivery; and partly from the carelessness and inattention of Prosecutors, who are either unable or unwilling to sustain the expence of Counsel to oppose the arguments and objections which will be offered in behalf of the prisoner: or are soured by loss of valuable time, experienced, perhaps in former prosecutions;[122]--or ultimately from a dread entertained by timid persons, who foolishly and weakly consider themselves as taking away the life of a fellow-creature, merely because they prosecute or give evidence; not reflecting that it is the _Law_ only that can punish offenders, and _not_ the individual prosecutor or witnesses. [Footnote 122: It is true, that by the Acts of 25th Geo. II. cap. 36, and 18th Geo. III. cap. 13, the expences of the prosecutors and witnesses are to be paid; and also (if the parties shall appear to be in poor circumstances) a reasonable allowance made for trouble and loss of time; but this is connected with the regulations of the Justices, confirmed by one of the Judges of Assize, which vary according to local circumstances, and it is also necessary to plead poverty in order to be remunerated for loss of time: _but as the poor seldom suffer by thieves_, these Acts appear to have had little effect in encouraging prosecutors to come forward; and it is believed few applications are made excepting in cases of real poverty.--In the County of Middlesex there is an exception; where witnesses are directed to be paid by the Overseers of the Poor of the Parish, where the person was apprehended; but this mode of payment is seldom if ever adopted.--The fund, however, which the Legislature has thus provided, if oeconomically and judiciously applied by a Public Prosecutor, would remove many difficulties, without any material addition to the county rates.] False Humanity, exercised in this manner, is always cruelty to the public, and not seldom to the prisoners themselves.--All depredations upon property are _public wrongs_, in the suppression and punishment of which it is the duty of every good man to lend his assistance; a duty more particularly incumbent upon those who are the immediate sufferers: through their means only can Public Justice operate in punishing those miscreants, by whom the innocent are _put in fear, alarmed and threatened with horrid imprecations--with loss of life by means of loaded pistols_; or bodily injury, from being hacked with cutlasses, or beaten with bludgeons--under circumstances where neither age nor sex is spared.--