“Beck’s last hope had perished. Once more a merciless fate had blinded the eyes and closed the ears of Justice to his innocence. He was to be immured in a convict cell for ten, perhaps for fourteen, years; he was to pass the closing years of his life a branded felon amid all the horrors of a convict prison. In all human probability he would die without ever seeing the light of freedom again, for he could not have borne this second torture. “His voice, crying aloud for freedom, would be heard no more. Petitions for a reinvestigation of his case would be hopeless. He had been robbed of his last earthly chance of proving his innocence. “Those words, ‘The prisoner pleaded guilty to a former conviction,’ would have damned him to the last day of his life. “My painful task is ended. “A foreigner, a stranger within our gates, a man of kindly heart and gentle ways, has been foully wronged. There is but one reparation we can make him. The people of this country owe him a testimonial of sympathy that shall endure and remain. On the site of his martyrdom there should rise a national monument. Let that monument take the form of a Court of Criminal Appeal. That is the one reparation that the English people can make to Adolf Beck for the foul wrong he has suffered in their midst.” In a sense the innocent man who is hanged may be regarded as better off than he who is called upon to endure lifelong imprisonment. There are plenty of examples of these judicial murders. Over a score of undoubted cases occurred in the first two decades of the last century, and since then there have been twice as many more. A notorious and awful case was that of Eliza Fenning, who, at eighteen years of age, was sent to the gallows upon the perjured evidence of an accomplice of the real murderer. The latter afterward confessed. Another similar case occurred in 1850, when a man named Ross was executed for poisoning his young wife by mixing arsenic with her food. A few years later certain facts came to light, proving conclusively that the real criminal was a female acquaintance and confidante of the dead woman. Thomas Perryman, again, was found guilty in 1879 of the murder of his aged mother on the very flimsiest of evidence. His sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and in the ordinary course of events he should now be free. More than 100,000 people have, at different times, petitioned for the release of this convict, and the highest judicial authorities have expressed their belief in his entire innocence of the crime imputed to him. Yet he has been compelled to drink his terrible cup to the bitter dregs.