There might, further, be the grossest errors of law, as laid down by the judge to the jury, or of fact upon the evidence, without the prisoner having any remedy. Neither the evidence nor the judge’s directions appeared upon the face of the ‘record,’ and it was only for some irregularity upon the record that a writ of error would lie. A curious practice, however, gradually sprang up, whereby substantial miscarriage of justice was often averted. If a legal point of any difficulty arose in any criminal case heard at the Assizes, or elsewhere, the judge respited the prisoner, or postponed judgment, and reported the matter to the judges. The point reserved was then argued before the judges by counsel, not in court, but at Serjeants’ Inn, of which all the judges were members. If it was decided that the prisoner had been improperly convicted, he received a free pardon. It was this tribunal which was in 1848 erected into the Court for Crown Cases Reserved. The outcry against capital punishment for minor felonies was still in full blast. The history of this legislation is extremely curious. The value of human life was slowly raised. It had, thanks to the noble efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly, ceased to be a capital offence to steal from a shop to the amount of 5_s._; but public opinion was still more enlightened than the laws. A humane judge compelled to pass sentence of death upon a woman convicted of stealing from a dwelling-house to the value of 40_s._, shocked when the wretched victim fainted away, cried out, ‘Good woman, good woman, I don’t mean to hang you. I don’t mean to hang you. Will nobody tell her I don’t mean to hang her?’ Jurors perjured themselves rather than subject anybody to this awful penalty. In 1833 Lord Suffield, in the House of Lords, declared, ‘I hold in my hand a list of 555 perjured verdicts delivered at the Old Bailey in fifteen years, for the single offence of stealing from dwelling-houses; the value stolen being in these cases sworn above the value of 40_s._ but the verdicts returned being to the value of 39_s._ only.’ Human life was, then, appraised at 5_l._ But juries were equal to the occasion. Disregarding the actual amount stolen, they substituted for the old verdict ‘Guilty of stealing to the value of 39_s._’--‘Guilty of stealing to the value of 4_l._ 19_s._’ Here is an illustration. A man was convicted at the Old Bailey of robbing his employers to the amount of 1,000_l._ The evidence was overwhelming. Property worth 200_l._ was found in his own room; 300_l._ more was traced to the man to whom he had sold it. The jury found him guilty of stealing to the amount of 4_l._ 19_s._ He was again indicted for stealing 25_l._, and again convicted of stealing less than 5_l._ In the remaining indictments the prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to the same extent. In the same way, for years prior to 1832, when the death penalty for forgery was abolished--except in the cases of wills and powers of attorney relating