Magistrates and others do not sufficiently study this. Patriotic county officials loudly deny what everyone who reads the Judicial Statistics knows to be true. In discussing the Edalji case I pointed out that to anyone who studied the history of crime it was far more likely that such crime would be committed by a native of the county than by a gentleman of Parsee descent. This seemed to annoy some ardent Staffordshire folk, but there is no reason why it should. Killing and maiming the cattle of others is a very ancient pursuit and has only recently been regarded as criminal. The wicked man in the Bible was often threatened with the destruction of his cattle. No doubt the righteous man was encouraged thereby to take upon himself the duty of avenging his wrongs by destroying his wicked neighbour's cattle, and the wicked neighbour, believing himself to be the righteous one, retaliated in kind. Certain it is that in border countries we always read of cattle raiding and killing and maiming, and perhaps one reason why Staffordshire is old fashioned in the cattle-maiming business is that it was a border country, and in the good old days the lords and squires raided cattle and destroyed their neighbour's farms and boundaries, and these antiquated habits remain with some as natural instincts of revenge. In early days such acts were not considered criminal. The only malicious injury to property known to the English common law as a crime was arson. It was not until the time of Henry VIII. (37 Hen. VIII., c. 6) that it was discovered that there were "divers sundry malicious and curious persons, being men of evil and perverse disposition and seduced by the instigation of the devil, who, to damnify the king's true subjects went about burning frames of timber ready to be set up and edified for houses," and broke down dams and moats or cut away lead pipes, or barked apple trees, or cut out beasts' tongues, which seems a very ancient and horrible form of maiming cattle. The penalty for these latter offences was the inadequate fine of ten pounds. In 1722 came the Black Act which made it felony without benefit of clergy to "unlawfully or maliciously kill, maim, or wound any cattle." In 1861 a Malicious Damage Act (24 & 25 Vict. c. 97) was passed, codifying all the law relating to such offences, and that is the Act under which Mr. Edalji was indicted.