Next, the coarser scoundrels, Bambridge and Corbett, were tried for the murder of a Mr. Castell, who had been thrust into Corbett’s spunging-house while the small-pox was raging there, and died. Bambridge, too, was acquitted through some legal quibble; but the widow of the murdered man had another quibble, by which she hoped to obtain redress. She retained the famous casuist Lee, the sage who in a single action once pleaded seventy-seven pleas. She sued out an appeal of murder against the warden and his man. This involved the “wager of battle,” which you remember in the strange Yorkshire case some forty years ago, and which was at last put an end to by statute. The appellee could either fight the appellant _à la_ dog of Montargis, or throw himself on his country, _i.e._ submit to be tried again. Bambridge and Corbett chose the latter course, were again tried, and again escaped. They were, however, very near being torn to pieces by the populace. Lord Campbell says, I venture to think unjustly, that Mrs. Castell was incited to the appeal by a “mobbish confederation.”[8] Good heaven! was anything but a confederation of the feelings of common humanity necessary to incite all honest men to bring these wretches to justice? I suppose that it was by a “mobbish confederation” that the villanous Austin, of Birmingham gaol, was tried, and that after all his atrocities of gagging, “jacketing,” and cramming salt down his prisoners’ throats, he, too, escaped with an almost nominal punishment. Lee, the casuist (he was afterwards Chief Justice), was so disgusted with the result of the trial, that he vowed he would never have aught to do with facts again, but henceforth would stick to law alone. I am not lawyer enough to know why the case against Bambridge and Corbett broke down; I only know that these men were guilty of murder most foul and most unnatural, and that one of our most ancient legal maxims is explicit as to their culpability.[9] A committee of gentlemen in large wigs, sitting round a table in a gloomy apartment, and examining witnesses likewise in wigs, is not a very inspiring theme for a painter; but I have always considered Hogarth’s rendering of the proceedings to be one of the most masterly of Hogarth’s tableaux. The plate was a great favourite with Horace Walpole, who described with much discrimination the various emotions of pity, horror, and indignation on the countenances of the spectators; the mutely eloquent testimony of the shackles and manacles on the table; the pitiable appearance of the half-starved prisoner who is giving evidence; and, especially, the Judas-like appearance of Bambridge (who was present), his yellow cheeks and livid lips, his fingers clutching at the button-holes in his coat, and his face advanced, “as if eager to lie.” There was a large sale for the engraving taken from this picture, and Hogarth gained largely in reputation from its production.