IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 223 between the criminal laws of England and those of other countries in Europe may be seen in the facts mentioned by Howard. When in Amsterdam on his tour of inquiry among the prisons of Europe, he found that during the eight years before his arrival there in 1783, only five criminals had been executed out of a population of two Executions hundred and fifty thousand — ^about one-third of that of dam.™*** London.* In all the seven provinces which constituted the Dutch Republic, there were seldom more than five or six executions in the course of a year. These statistics are quite enough to justify Sir James PitzStephen's statement that the English people during the last century were, as Beckiess- a rule, '^ singularly reckless about taking human lif e."t <»kinfif "*«• Many allusions to this peculiar characteristic of the nation might be quoted from the literature of the last century. Sheridan illustrated it with his usual point when he asked, during the debate on a bill making it capital to destroy any tree, shrub, or plant in a garden — ^^ was it under the pretence of protecting nursery grounds that they proposed to make it felony in a schoolboy to rob an orchard, or was it
- State of the Prisons, p. 56.
t History of the Criminal Law, toL i, p. 478. The recklessness was shown not only in the multitude of cases in which life was taken, but in the man- ner of taking it. By an Act passed in 1752, for instance, murderers were allowed but one clear day to prepare for death ; and after execution their bodies were handed over to the surgeon for anatomical practice. The fre- quency of executions may be gathered from the following : — John Townshend, a Bow-street officer examined before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1816, relates in his evidence that Lord Chief Justice Eyre once went the Home Circuit, beginning at Hertford and finish- ing at Kingston, when crimes were so desperate that in his charge to the Grand Jury at Hertford he told them to be careful what bills they found, for he had made up his mind, whatever persons were convicted throughout the circuit for capital offences, to hang them all. And he kept his wora ; he saved neither man nor woman. In one case seven people, four men and three women, were convicted of robbing a pedlar in a house in Kent-street.
- ' The^ were all convicted," says Townshend, " and all hanged in Kent-street
opposite the door; and, I think, on Kennineton Common eight more, muiing fifteen ; all that were convicted were hung." And, genextdly, he observes in another part of his evidence, with respect to the present time and the early part of my time, such as 1781-2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, where there is one person convicted now, I may say I am positively convinced there were five then ; we never had an execution wherein we did not grace that un- fortunate gibbet with ten, twelve to thirteen, sixteen, and twenty." — Charles Knight, ** London," vol. iv, p. 237. Digitized by Google
