Upon this, I, who took the boldness to speak freely before the Cardinal, said there was no reason to wonder at the matter, since this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself, nor good for the public; for as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual; simple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his life; and no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from robbing, who can find out no other way of livelihood; and in this, said I, not only you in England, but a great part of the world, imitate some ill masters that are readier to chastise their scholars than to teach them. There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves, but it were much better to make such good provisions by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing, and dying for it.... If you do not find a remedy to these evils, it is a vain thing to boast of your severity of punishing theft; which, though it may have the appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient; for if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves, and then punish them? In confirmation of the statement of Henry the Eighth's Lord Chancellor, we have the evidence of Harrison, that after these 72,000 executions of Henry, there were more thieves than ever in the next reign. Harrison, who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth, says of the "rogues and vagabonds": "the punishment that is ordained for this kind of people is very sharp, and yet it cannot restrain them from their gadding." In that day any one convicted, "on the testimony of two honest and credible witnesses," of being a "rogue," "he is then immediately adjudged to be grievously whipped, and burned through the gristle of the right ear, with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about." Amongst the "rogues" were included actors, jugglers, fencers, minstrels, and _tinkers!_ Harrison toasts that our laws against felons were more humane than those of the Continent. Let us consider the leniency of Elizabeth's day. A woman who poisoned her husband was burnt alive. Other poisoners were boiled alive, or scalded to death in "seething water or lead." Heretics and witches were burnt alive. Murderers were hanged alive in chains. Harrison adds: "We have use neither of the wheel nor of the bar as in other countries; but when wilful manslaughter is perpetrated, besides hanging, the offender hath his right hand commonly stricken off, before or near the place where the act was done, after which he is led forth to the place of execution and there put to death according to the law." For treason men were "hanged, drawn, and quartered."