fer from the cold, it seems
to me that _they_ are the people who should apply to those who have
anything to bestow in charity; not those who are the only people, as
it would appear, who can take pleasure in this excruciating weather.
See if your club cannot do something for these poor sufferers instead
of collecting merely for your own personal amusement; contribute to
their necessities, and then come and see me again. I shall be here
till Monday."

The head of the deputation stared, but it did not lose its presence of
mind or forget its duty. The deputation made a little speech "thanking
me heartily for the kind manner in which they had been received."

I never saw anything more of them from that day to this.

[In a case at Devizes Sir Henry showed in a striking manner the
character he always bore as a humane Judge. He was not humane where
cruelty was any part of the culprit's misdeeds, for he visited that
with the punishment he thought it deserved, and his idea of that was
on a somewhat considerable scale.]

I was down upon cruelty, and always lenient where there were any
mitigating circumstances whatever, either of mental weakness, great
temptation, provocation, or unhappy surroundings.

A woman was brought up before me who had been committed to take her
trial on a charge of concealing the birth of a child. For prisoners
in these circumstances I always felt great sympathy, and regarded the
moral guilt as altogether unworthy of punishment. The law, however,
was bound to be vindicated so far as the legal offence was concerned.
She had already been in prison for three months, because she was too
poor and too friendless to find bail. I am always pointing out that
if magistrates would send more cases to the Judges than they do, they
would get some precedents as to the appropriate measure of punishment,
which they seem badly to need. This woman had already been punished,
without being found guilty, with three times the punishment she ought
to have received had she been found guilty. A month's imprisonment
would have been excessive.

Prisoners should always be released on their own recognizances where
there is a reasonable expectation that they will appear.

The result was that the unhappy woman, who had been punished severely
while in the eye of the law she was innocent, was discharged when she
was found to be guilty.

We have seen how Mr. Justice Maule examined a little boy as to his
understanding the nature of