Essex Bridge was fringed with heads as whilom London Bridge was; though faithful friends, when they found a chance, stole and buried them. There was a rage for trials by court-martial; a constant outcry for more victims. A mania for mimicking the Bench took possession of the military, officers of inferior rank vying with each other in an assumption of judicial functions. Whilst my Lords Carleton and Kilwarden and Messrs. Curran and Toler were plodding through a legal farce at the Sessions-House, talking through night after night to 'juries of the right sort,' the gentlemen of the yeomanry at the Exchange were making the shortest possible work of the lives under their control. Once dragged thither, conviction followed arrest as the day the night. The sun was not allowed to set upon the accused. Although prepared to close his eyes to much, the new Viceroy found his patience and temper sorely tried; and at last, in spite of expostulation in high quarters, issued general orders condemning the conduct of the soldiery. He failed to see, he declared, how torture could be a good opiate, and was even foolish enough to suggest that banishment for a short term of years would serve all the state purposes quite as well as hanging. To this the incensed chancellor retorted by reams of jeremiads addressed to Mr. Pitt, wherein he laid stress on the new troubles which would inevitably come on all good Protestants in consequence of such deplorable backsliding from Lord Camden's able system. In his turn Lord Cornwallis pointed out the reasons for his conduct. Private enemies were daily in the most unblushing manner haled before courts-martial and consigned to Moiley. Some of the lesser gentry even went so far as openly to plunder the country houses whose owners had fled from them in fear. The behaviour of underlings was subversive of all discipline. They held back documents unless paid for honesty; Sirr admitted that what was planned by his superiors in council was made of none effect in his own office. The chancellor scored one. Lord Cornwallis found himself compelled to apologise for his leniency. He received a rap upon the knuckles from a Gr--t P--rs--n--ge in a letter which may be found in the Cornwallis correspondence, and sat down to pour out his vexations to an old brother-in-arms, as his way was when specially provoked. 'My conduct,' he wrote, 'gets me abused by both sides, being too coercive for the one, too lenient for the other; but my conscience approves.'