[159]. “... Of the 160 offences referred to by Blackstone as punishable by death, four-fifths had been made so during the reigns of the first three Georges.”—J. A. M. Irvine, Chambers’s Encyclopædia, ii. p. 743, art. “Capital Punishment.” London, 1888.
[160]. James Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, p. 718. Speech on the state of the Criminal Law, House of Commons, 2nd March 1819. London, 1851.
[161]. “The anecdotes which I have heard of this shameful and injurious facility I am almost ashamed to repeat. Mr. Burke once told me that on a certain occasion when he was leaving the House one of the messengers called him back, and, on his saying that he was going on urgent business, replied: ‘Oh, it will not keep you a single moment; it is only a capital felony without benefit of clergy.’”—Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, p. 718.
[162]. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, p. 718.
[163]. There grew up, as an eminent judge of those days has declared, “a general confederacy of prosecutors, witnesses, counsel, juries, judges, and the advisers of the Crown, to prevent the execution of the criminal law.”—Sir William Grant, quoted by Mackintosh, p. 719.
[164]. Irvine in Chambers’s Encyclopædia, ii. p. 743.
[165]. Mackintosh, p. 718.
[166]. Reprinted in the Times, 18th January 1901.
[167]. Du Cane, Crime, pp. 35, 36.
[168]. Howard, State of the Prisons, p. 22.