to the public funds--juries refused to convict. ‘Prisoner at the bar,’ said Chief Baron Richards to a man acquitted at Carnarvon Assizes for forging Bank of England notes, ‘although you have been acquitted by a jury of your countrymen of the crime of forgery, I am as convinced of your guilt as that two and two make four.’ And the jury privately admitted that they were of the same opinion. In short, the severity of the penal code was a positive danger to the community. Professed thieves made a rich harvest by getting themselves indicted capitally, because they then felt sure of escape. The sentence, moreover, could not be carried out. It became usual in all cases except murder to merely order it to be recorded, which had the effect of a reprieve. Here are some figures. In the three years ended December 31, 1833, there were 896 commitments in London and Middlesex on capital offences and only twelve executions. In 1834, 1835, and 1836 there were 823 commitments and no executions. With the first year of the Queen a more merciful _régime_ was begun. Six offences--forgery in all cases; rioting; rescuing murderers; inciting to mutiny; smuggling with arms; and kidnapping slaves--were declared not capital. But it was not until 1861 that all these blots were finally erased from the Statute Book. Among other mediæval barbarities, the dissection of a murderer’s body was not abolished until 1861, but it was made optional in 1832. Hanging in chains was done away with in 1834. The pillory, a punishment limited to perjury since 1816, was altogether abolished in 1837. The stocks had been generally superseded by the treadmill ten years earlier. Common assaults and many misdemeanours were, on the other hand, much more leniently dealt with in those days than they are in our own. As late as 1847 a case occurred in which a ruffian pounded his wife with his fists so that she remained insensible for three days. Yet, since he used no weapon, he could only be convicted of a common assault and imprisoned without hard labour. But it was not perhaps an unmixed evil that the powers of the magistrates were then very limited. The ‘Great Unpaid,’ as they were then universally known, were a bye-word. Their proceedings, both at Petty and Quarter Sessions, were disgraced by ignorance, rashness, and class prejudice. Summary jurisdiction was then, fortunately, only in its infancy. CHAPTER XIX. CONCLUSION. The consideration of the country as it was would not be complete without some comparison with the country as it is. But I will make this comparison as brief as possible.