ly it was; at any rate, the jury shared the view of the Prince,
the plea of insanity was, set aside, and Francis was found guilty of
high treason and condemned to death; but, as there was no proof of
an intent to kill or even to wound, this sentence, after a lengthened
deliberation between the Home Secretary and the Judges, was commuted for
one of transportation for life. As the law stood, these assaults, futile
as they were, could only be treated as high treason; the discrepancy
between the actual deed and the tremendous penalties involved was
obviously grotesque; and it was, besides, clear that a jury, knowing
that a verdict of guilty implied a sentence of death, would tend to
the alternative course, and find the prisoner not guilty but insane--a
conclusion which, on the face of it, would have appeared to be the more
reasonable. In 1842, therefore, an Act was passed making any attempt
to hurt the Queen a misdemeanor, punishable by transportation for seven
years, or imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for a term not
exceeding three years--the misdemeanant, at the discretion of the Court,
"to be publicly or privately whipped, as often, and in such manner
and form, as the Court shall direct, not exceeding thrice." The four
subsequent attempts were all dealt with under this new law; William
Bean, in 1842, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment; William
Hamilton, in 1849, was transported for seven years; and, in 1850, the
same sentence was passed upon Lieutenant Robert Pate, who struck the
Queen on the head with his cane in Piccadilly. Pate, alone among these
delinquents, was of mature years; he had held a commission in the Army,
dressed himself as a dandy, and was, the Prince declared, "manifestly
deranged." In 1872 Arthur O'Connor, a youth of seventeen, fired
an unloaded pistol at the Queen outside Buckingham Palace; he
was immediately seized by John Brown, and sentenced to one year's
imprisonment and twenty strokes of the birch rod. It was for his bravery
upon this occasion that Brown was presented with one of his gold medals.
In all these cases the jury had refused to allow the plea of insanity;
but Roderick Maclean's attempt in 1882 had a different issue. On this
occasion the pistol was found to have been loaded, and the public
indignation, emphasised as it was by Victoria's growing popularity,
was particularly great. Either for this or for some other reason the
procedure of the last forty years was aband