Throughout Europe, the prevailing idea concerning the management of criminals seems to have been vengeance. One would scarcely believe, except on trustworthy authority, that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the English criminal law recognized 223 capital offences. Indeed, so strong was the feeling in favour of severity that Edmund Burke said he could obtain the assent of the House of Commons to any law imposing the penalty of death. If one shot a rabbit he was hanged; if he injured Westminster Bridge he was hanged; if he appeared disguised on a public road he was hanged, and so on. The hanging of small groups was a common occurrence—children of ten years being sometimes among the condemned.[265] [265] Robert Mackenzie, _The Nineteenth Century_, p. 77. A visit to the Five-Sided Tower in Nuremberg, in which are still preserved various instruments of human torture, will give an idea of the extreme cruelty practised upon political offenders and heretics a century ago. The “Holy Alliance” of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, which was formed ostensibly to insure peace and establish justice, but which in reality was entered into to suppress free speech, check the growing liberties of the people, and strengthen the belief in the “divine right of kings,” shows the obstacles which had to be overcome before any principle of justice and humanity could take root. The history of industrial and economic conditions since the beginning of the eighteenth century is largely the history of the common people. The change from the Feudal system to that of the wage-earning régime may not, as far as the working class is concerned, be regarded as an unmixed blessing. Under Feudalism the “lord of the soil” was responsible for the maintenance and well-being of his vassals, while under the wage system the “captains of industry” assume no such responsibility. If the labourer chooses to accept the terms offered well and good, if he refuses he may starve; it is a matter of no concern to the employer, for, are there not plenty of labourers who stand ready to take his place? That the labourer was no less a slave under the wage-earning system than he had been under Feudalism is shown in the fact that under the first named as well as under the latter he had not the right of free contract. He must take what was offered him or starve.