The same idea is also conspicuous in the practice of punishing criminals in public.[175] A petty thief in the pillory and a scold on the cucking-stool were, in earlier times, spectacles familiar to everybody, whilst persons still living remember seeing offenders publicly whipped in the streets. "A gallows or tree with a man hanging upon it," says Mr. Wright, "was so frequent an object in the country that it seems to have been almost a natural ornament of a landscape, and it is thus introduced by no {192} means uncommonly in mediæval manuscripts."[176] In atrocious cases it was usual for the court to direct the murderer, after execution, to be hung upon a gibbet in chains near the place where the fact was committed, "with the intention of thereby deterring others from capital offences"; and in order that the body might all the longer serve this useful purpose, it was saturated with tar before it was hung in chains.[177] The popularity which mutilation as a punishment enjoyed during the Middle Ages was largely due to the opinion, that "a malefactor miserably living was a more striking example of justice than one put to death at once."[178] [Footnote 175: Günther, _Die Idee der Wiedervergeltung_, i. 211 _sq._ n. 31.] [Footnote 176: Wright, _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages_, p. 346.] [Footnote 177: Holinshed, _op. cit._ i. 311. Blackstone, _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, iv. 201. Cox, 'Hanging in Chains,' in _The Antiquary_, xxii. 213 _sq._] [Footnote 178: Strutt, _View of the Manners, &c. of the Inhabitants of England_, ii. 8.] We shall now consider whether these facts really contradict our thesis that punishment is essentially an expression of public indignation.