Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/102

82 warrant of arrest. Sometimes they were but processes of inquiry, and even argued, by the silence imposed upon all, a certain consideration for the person seized. For the mass of the people, little versed as they were in such shades of difference, they had peculiar terrors.

It must not be forgotten that in 1705, and even much later, England was far from being what she is to-day. The general features of its constitution were confused and, at times, very oppressive. Daniel Defoe, who had had a taste of the pillory himself, characterizes the social order of England, somewhere in his writings, as "the iron hands of the law." There was not only the law, but there was its arbitrary administration. We have but to recall Steele, ejected from Parliament; Locke, driven from his professorship; Hobbes and Gibbon, compelled to leave the country; Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestly, persecuted; John Wilkes sent to the Tower. The task would be a long one, were we to enumerate the victims of the statute against seditious libel. The inquisition had gained quite a foothold throughout Europe, and its police practice was taken as a guide. A monstrous outrage against all rights was possible in England. We have only to recall the "Gazetier Cuirassé." In the middle of the eighteenth century, Louis XV. had writers whose works displeased him arrested in Piccadilly. It is also true that George II. laid hands on the Pretender in France, right in the middle of the hall at the opera. Those were two long arms,—that of the King of France reaching to London; that of the King of England, reaching to Paris! Such was the liberty of the period.

We may add that they were fond of putting people to death privately in prisons,—sleight-of-hand mingled with capital punishment; a hideous expedient, to which England is reverting at the present moment, thus giving