orth, "acquired by so wicked a trade, rested peacefully in their
pockets." It should be remembered that the kidnapping justices whom the
odious Jeffreys so indignantly denounced were tolerated and courted by
their respectable and prosperous neighbors; and some of the worst
charges, by which the judge's fame has been rendered odious to
posterity, depend upon the evidence of men who, if they were not
kidnappers themselves, saw nothing peculiarly atrocious in the conduct
of magistrates who systematically sold their fellow-countrymen into a
most barbarous slavery.

Amongst old circuit stories of questionable truthfulness there is a
singular anecdote recorded by the biographers of Chief Justice Hale,
who, whilst riding the Western Circuit, tried a half-starved lad on a
charges of burglary. The prisoner had been shipwrecked upon the Cornish
coast, and on his way through an inhospitable district had endured the
pangs of extreme hunger. In his distress, the famished wanderer broke
the window of a baker's shop and stole a loaf of bread. Under the
circumstances, Hale directed the jury to acquit the prisoner: but, less
merciful than the judge, the gentlemen of the box returned a verdict of
'Guilty'--a verdict which the Chief Justice stoutly refused to act upon.
After much resistance, the jurymen were starved into submission; and the
youth was set at liberty. Several years elapsed; and Chief Justice Hale
was riding the Northern Circuit, when he was received with such costly
and excessive pomp by the sheriff of a northern county, that he
expostulated with his entertainer on the lavish profuseness of his
conduct. "My lord," answered the sheriff, with emotion, "don't blame me
for showing my gratitude to the judge who saved my life when I was an
outcast. Had it not been for you, I should have been hanged in Cornwall
for stealing a loaf, instead of living to be the richest landowner of my
native county."

A sketch of circuit-life in the middle of the last century may be found
in 'A Northern Circuit, Described in a Letter to a Friend: a Poetical
Essay. By a Gentleman of the Middle Temple. 1751.'--a piece of doggrel
that will meet with greater mercy from the antiquary than the poetical
critic.

In seeking to avoid the customary exactions of their office, the
sheriffs of the present generation were only following in the steps of
sheriffs who, more than a century past, exerted themselves to reduce the
expenses of shrievalties, and whose