I ought not to dismiss this subject without adding something to the brief allusion already made to the comparative mildness of the laws of Massachusetts in respect to capital punishment. The execution of Mark and Phillis took place just about the time that Blackstone was delivering his lectures at Oxford, which have since given him an enduring and world-wide fame as a commentator on the laws of England. This elegant defender and apologist for English laws and customs, in his commentaries, admits, seemingly with reluctance and regret, that there then existed on the statute-books of England no less than one hundred and sixty capital offences. At that time the number of capital offences in Massachusetts was less than one-tenth this number, if we exclude those made so by the acts relating to military offenders in actual service, and felonies on the high seas, and a few others, which, like the latter, were created by including among capital crimes certain offences which, though theretofore exempt from the death penalty by special circumstances and technical rules, had always been capitally punished when committed under other and not less justifiable circumstances. Said Isaac Backus, whom I find to be a very trustworthy authority, in a letter to this Society, under date of Feb. 20, 1794, "There has not been any person hanged in Plymouth County for above these sixty years past."[26] More than a century earlier, John Dunton mentions a sermon of Mather's, preached at the execution of "Morgan, the only person executed in that country [Massachusetts] for near seven years."[27] He must, however, I think, have forgotten the case of Maria, the negro woman. [Footnote 26: 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 152.] [Footnote 27: _Ibid._, 2d series, vol. ii. p. 102.] Again, when the English riot act (1 Geo. I. stat. 2, ch. 5) was substantially adopted by the Province in 1751, the legislature studiously avoided the harshness of the former act by substituting forfeiture of lands and chattels, and whipping and imprisonment, for the death penalty.[28] [Footnote 28: Compare provincial statute 1750-51, ch. 17 (Prov. Laws, vol. iii. p. 540), with the act of parliament referred to.] In 1761 Governor Bernard vainly labored with his utmost zeal to secure the passage of an act or acts making it felony, without benefit of clergy, to forge public and private securities or vouchers for money, or to coin or counterfeit the current money of the Province. He sent a special message upon the subject to the Assembly, in which he stated:--