proof of the sanguinary spirit of the English laws, or the dissolute manners of the nation. In some of the United Provinces, the barbarous spectacle of a public execution has not occurred within a century; and the average of malefactors who in that period have suffered at Amsterdam, is less than one victim a year devoted to appease the indignation of offended laws. How amiable and enlightened is this policy, compared with the profuse waste of human life by the English courts of justice! At different times, the British legislature has deliberately pronounced one hundred and sixty crimes <references>
gives an average of about sixty-five persons yearly suffering by the hand of the executioner. The average of the twelve preceding years gives thirty-nine convicts annually hanged. If the amount be taken for seventeen years, from 1771 to 1788, the average is rather more than forty-seven executions a year. Since that period the number of persons annually hanged may safely be averaged at forty. The war, by furnishing a number of turbulent, ill-disposed, or necessitous persons, with employment in the army or navy, has abridged the yearly labours of the public executioner.
