What has been mistaken by your correspondent for a piece of Irish barbarity, was, until the Act 12 Geo. III. c. 20., the usual punishment awarded by the law to culprits standing mute upon an arraignment of felony (that is, without speaking at all, or without putting himself upon God and the country). The judgment in such case was: "That the man or woman should be remanded to the prison, and laid there in some low and dark room, where they should lie naked on the bare earth, without any litter, rushes, or other clothing, and without any garment about them, but something to cover their privy parts, and that they should lie upon their backs, their heads uncovered and their feet, and one arm to be drawn to one quarter of the room with a cord, and the other arm to another quarter, and in the same manner to be done with their legs; and there should be laid upon their bodies iron and stone, so much as they might bear, and more; and the next day following, to leave three morsels of barley bread without any drink, and the second day to drink thrice of the water next to the house of the prison (except running water), without any bread; and this to be their diet until they were dead. So as, upon the matter, they should die three manner of ways, by weight, by famine, and by cold. And the reason of this terrible judgment was because they refused to stand to the common law of the land."--2 _Inst._ 178, 179. In the Year-Book of 8 Henry IV. the form of the judgment is _first_ given. The Marshal of the King's Bench is ordered to put the criminals into "diverses measons bases et estoppes, que ils gisent par la terre touts nuds forsque leurs braces, que ils mettroit sur chascun d'eux tants de fer et poids quils puissent porter et plus," &c., (as above). It appears also, from Barrington's _Observations on the Statutes_, that, until the above-mentioned act, it was usual to torture a prisoner by tying his thumbs tightly together with whipcord in order to extort a plea; and he mentions the following instances where one or more of these barbarous cruelties have been inflicted: "In 1714 a prisoner's thumbs were thus tied at the same place" (Old Bailey), "who then pleaded; and in January, 1720, William Spigget submitted in the same manner after the thumbs being tied _as usual_, and his accomplice, Phillips, was absolutely pressed for a considerable time, till he begged to stand on his trial. In April, 1720, Mary Andrews continued so obstinate, that three whipcords were broken before she would plead. In December, 1721, Nathanael Haws suffered in the same manner by squeezing the thumbs; after {428} which he continued under the press for seven minutes with 250 lbs., and then submitted." Barrington also says in the text: