For felony, which was anything from highway robbery to theft of a piece of bread, men, women, and children were hanged. There were over 250 offences for which the penalty was death. For "speaking sedition against a magistrate" the offender had both his ears cut off. If a prisoner refused to plead he was pressed to death under heavy weights. Harrison says that "there is not one year" in which three or four hundred "rogues" are not "eaten up by the gallows." And then he goes on to remark that so many are the idle rogues, that "except some better order be taken, or the laws already made be better executed, such as dwell in uplandish towns and little villages shall live but in small safety or rest." A hundred years ago there were over two hundred offences for which the punishment was death. Boys and girls were hanged for theft. Mr. Collinson, in _Facts about Floggings_, says that in 1816 there were at one time over fifty prisoners in England waiting to be hanged, and that one of them was a child of tender years. Mr. Collinson says: The inefficiency and brutality of all this torture and bloodshed became obvious to the people, through the propaganda of a few daring and enlightened reformers, and it was swept away. But let us come nearer home. About a dozen years ago the late Mr. Hopwood, K.C., Recorder of Liverpool, was good enough to give me his opinions on the subject of harsh and lenient punishment. Mr. Hopwood said: I was first convinced of the uselessness of harsh sentences by attendance at two courts of sessions about thirty-five years ago. The two courts were those of Manchester and Salford--towns very similar as to population and conditions of life. In Salford the sentences were uniformly lenient. In Manchester they were uniformly severe. People said Manchester would be purged of crime; that all the criminals would flock to Salford. It was not so. The state of things continued for some years, and caused no increase of crime in the one, nor decrease of crime in the other town. Hence it becomes evident that a great deal of useless punishment was inflicted in Manchester. I was a young barrister at the time, and I took the lesson to heart. Mr. Hopwood only claimed a negative result. He said: "I do not say I have reduced crime, but only that I have reduced punishment without increasing crime. For instance, I claim that during my six years at this court I have saved three thousand years of imprisonment." When I remarked "that saved a great waste of money," he answered that it was "a great saving of humanity." He claimed that life and property were at least as secure under a clement judge as under a cruel one, and that his system saved much suffering and shame, not only to the prisoners, but also to those dependent upon them. He said that very often his treatment had a good effect upon the prisoners: "Do you know, often they are ashamed to come back."