ious to
the gentler sex by maintaining that husbands might flog their wives, if
the chastisement were administered with a stick not thicker than the
operator's thumb. But the severity to criminals, which gave him a place
amongst hanging judges, was not a consequence of natural cruelty.
Inability to devise a satisfactory system of secondary punishments, and
a genuine conviction that ninety-nine out of every hundred culprits were
incorrigible, caused him to maintain that the gallows-tree was the most
efficacious as well as the cheapest instrument that could be invented
for protecting society against malefactors. Another of his stern _dicta_
was, that previous good character was a reason for increasing rather
than a reason for lessening a culprit's punishment; "For," he argued,
"the longer a prisoner has enjoyed the good opinion of the world, the
less are the excuses for his misdeeds, and the more injurious is his
conduct to public morality."

In contrast to these odious stories of hanging judges are some anecdotes
of great men, who abhorred the atrocities of our penal system, long
before the worst of them were swept away by reform. Lord Mansfield has
never been credited with lively sensibilities, but his humanity was so
shocked by the bare thought of killing a man for committing a trifling
theft, that he on one occasion ordered a jury to find that a stolen
trinket was of less value than forty shillings--in order that the thief
might escape the capital sentence. The prosecutor, a dealer in jewelry,
was so mortified by the judge's leniency, that he exclaimed, "What, my
lord, my golden trinket not worth forty shillings? Why, the fashion
alone cost me twice the money!" Removing his glance from the vindictive
tradesman, Lord Mansfield turned towards the jury, and said, with solemn
gravity, "As we stand in need of God's mercy, gentlemen, let us not hang
a man for fashion's sake."

Tenderness of heart was even less notable in Kenyon than in Murray; but
Lord Mansfield's successor was at least on one occasion stirred by
apathetic consequence of the bloody law against persons found guilty of
trivial theft. On the Home Circuit, having passed sentence of death on a
poor woman who had stolen property to the value of forty shillings in a
dwelling-house, Lord Kenyon saw the prisoner drop lifeless in the dock,
just as he ceased to speak. Instantly the Chief Justice sprang to his
feet, and screamed in a shrill tone, "I don't mean to hang