Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/602

 Contrasts in English Criminal Law.

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CONTRASTS IN ENGLISH CRIMINAL LAW. II. By Hampton L. Carson. IN a former paper we dwelt upon the sin gular contrast between the theory and the actual administration of the criminal law of England. In this paper we propose to point out the increasing severity in the list of English statutory crimes, as contrasted

Henry VIII. against heresy and papal su premacy. To one who casts a rapid and compre hensive glance at seven hundred years of English history, the eye is attracted with awful fascination to Temple Bar, red with

WESTMINSTER HALL.

with the common law. In fact, the punish ments for a multitude of offenses, which constantly augmented in number until the catalogue of crimes became appalling, were "very strait, sore, extreme, and terrible," to borrow the language of the preamble of 1 Edw. VI., chap. 12, a statute intended to abrogate the severity of the legislation of

blood, decked with gory, gruesome, ghastly heads and- limbs stuck upon poles, amid which the solitary harper, undeterred by stench and fearless of pestilence, would strum his couplets, while the curious vulgar would stare at them from below, and even as late as the days of Horace Walpole would peep through spyglasses at the cost of one