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of the metal, so ought not the learned reader to passe any syllable of this law, in respect of the excellency of the matter." The same sentiments were uttered by Sir John Davys, Sir Matthew Hale, Sergeant Hawkins, Sir Michael Foster, and Sir Wil liam Blackstone. The Earl of Chatham, in his noble panegyric upon the barons of Runnymede, exclaimed : " My lords, I think that history has not done justice to their conduct, Vtien they obtained from their sovereign that great acknowledgment of national rights contained in Magna Charta: they did not confine it to themselves alone, but delivered it as a common blessing to the whole people. They did not say, These are the rights of the great barons, or these are the rights of the great prelates. No, my lords; they said, in the simple Latin of the times, nullus liber homo, and provided as carefully for the meanest subject as for the greatest. These are uncouth words, and sound but poorly in the ears of schol ars; neither are they addressed to the criticism of scholars, but the hearts of freemen. These three words — nullus liber homo — have a meaning which interests us all; they deserve to be remembered — they deserve to be inculcated in our minds — they are worth all the classics." Even the sober-minded Mr. Hallam asserted that it must have been a clear principle of the Constitution from the days of John that no man could be detained in prison without a trial, and that from that era it became the right of every subject to demand the writ of habeas corpus. In no one of the authorities referred to can a line or a word be found in denunci ation of existing wrongs, or a suggestion for the amelioration of a savage code. It is not until the student turns to the State Trials and the Statutes that he can begin to realize the magnitude of the task un dertaken by those immortal criminal law reformers — Sir Samuel Romilly, Lord Brougham, Jeremy Bentham, and Rev. Sid

ney Smith. Before attempting a sketch of their labors, it is proper to trace in outline the actual condition in practice of English criminal law. This is the purpose of this paper. The point that we wish to emphasize and illustrate is that while the theory was noble and humane, the, practice was barbarous and cruel. Starting with the most comprehensive division of crimes into felonies and misde meanors, we notice that felonies embraced all offenses that were punished by death by custom, and included all the crimes of high est grade, from treason and murder to robbery and breach of prison, while misde meanors embraced all the lower grades of crime, from assaults and batteries to perjury and libel, the punishment being generally by fine and imprisonment, sometimes by transportation for life or years. A priori, it would be asserted that the greatest safe guards would be thrown about men charged with felonies, and that fewer rights or privi leges would be accorded to those charged with misdemeanors. In point of fact, how ever, the exact reverse was the case. . At common law, the graver the charge the more hopeless was the task of defense, not because of any inherent difficulty, but solely because of the failure of the law to throw actual safeguards about the unhappy wretch on trial. The evidence for the Crown was always given under the solemnity of an oath, a solemn adjuration, indeed, in superstitious days, but the prisoner was prevented by fixed rule from calling any witnesses in his behalf. This was not relaxed until the days of bloody Mary, and then the Court was simply admonished to listen to whatever could be said in favor of the subject. No witnesses, summoned for the defense, could be sworn, until the days of Anne. In all felonies the pris oner was denied a copy of the indict ment, and he was expected to be astute