That so barbarous a law existed within memory of
people to be found living in most villages appears almost incredible to
us; but despite the recommendations to 'mercy' usual in a large majority
of cases, the law of that time was not more horrible than the temper of
the men who administered it. There are good and bad among all, and in
all professions, but there is also a black spot in most, possibly all
hearts, which may be developed to almost any extent, to change the
justest, wisest, most moral men into 'human devils.' In reading the old
reports and the expressions used by the judges in their summings-up and
sentences, it is impossible not to believe that the awful power they
possessed, and its constant exercise, had not only produced the
inevitable hardening effect, but had made them cruel in the true sense
of the word. Their pleasure in passing dreadful sentences was very
thinly disguised by certain lofty conventional phrases as to the
necessity of upholding the law, morality, and religion; they were,
indeed, as familiar with the name of the Deity as any ranter in a
conventicle, and the 'enormity of the crime' was an expression as
constantly used in the case of the theft of a loaf of bread, or of an
old coat left hanging on a hedge, by some ill-clad, half-starved wretch,
as in cases of burglary, arson, rape, and murder.
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