[158] By 29 Car. ii. c. 7, § 7 it was enacted that no liability attached to the Hundred if a man be robbed whilst travelling on a Sunday—"for he should not travel on the Lord's Day, nor ought the Hundred to watch on that day of rest." Nevertheless it was ordained that Hue and Cry should be raised against a known offender, despite the non-liability of the Hundred, in order that depredators should not take advantage of the omission.
Actions against the Hundred had to be brought within three months from the date of the damage, and there was no liability for deeds done in the night-time—if, however, there was just sufficient light to see a man's face, liability might be proved, whatever the hour. No charge against the Hundred held good for any robbery done in a man's house, "because every man's house is his castle, which he ought to defend; and if any one be robbed in his house it shall be esteemed his own fault" (Dalton, c. 84); and with regard to liability on account of murder and robbery committed in the daytime, see "Year Book of the Exchequer," (16 Edward I.)
[159] 42 Geo. iii., c. 76.
[160] Between 1822 and 1828, the increase was about 38 per cent.
[161] It has been calculated that at this time there were as many as fifty fraudulent mints in the metropolis alone.
[162] In the hope of suppressing the seditious spirit so rife at this period, six coercive measures generally known as the "Six Acts" were rushed through both Houses of Parliament in a special autumn session of 1819. These Acts sought to preserve the peace by placing restrictions on the press, by forbidding the training of unauthorized persons in the use of arms, by empowering Justices of the Peace to search for and confiscate weapons, and by other repressive measures of a similar nature.
[163] "The policy of a legislator who punishes every offence with death, is like the pusillanimous terror of a child who crushes the insect he dares not look at."—Bentham, "Principles of the Penal Code," Part iv. Cap. xxii.
[164] "The more the certainty of punishment can be augmented, the more it may be diminished in amount."—Bentham, "Principles of the Penal Code." Rule viii.
[165] The ethical point of view is well put by Henry Fielding, who said, "Nor in plain truth will the utmost severity to offenders be justifiable, unless we take every possible means of preventing the offence."
[166] In a letter addressed to The Times of November 14th, 1849—Charles Dickens, himself an eye-witness of one of these brutalising exhibitions, wrote—"I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits."