The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) by Henry Hawkins Brampton
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page 11 of 427 (02%)
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with grief.
Happily we have no such processions now; even Justice itself has been humanized to some extent, and the law's cruel severity mitigated. The cart contained the rude shell into which had been laid the body of this poor man and woman's only son, _a youth of seventeen, hanged that morning at Bedford Jail for setting fire to a stack of corn_! He was now being conveyed to the village of Willshampstead, six miles from Bedford, there to be laid in the little churchyard where in his childhood he had played. He was the son of very respectable labouring people of Willshampstead; had been misled into committing what was more a boyish freak than a crime, and was hanged. That was all the authorities could do for him, and they did it. This is the remotest and the saddest reminiscence of my life, and the only sad one I mean to relate, if I can avoid it. But years afterwards, when I became a judge, this picture, photographed on my mind as it was, gave me many a lesson which I believe was turned to good account on the judicial bench. It was mainly useful in impressing on my mind the great consideration of the surrounding circumstances of every crime, the _degree_ of guilt in the criminal, and the difference in the degrees of the same kind of offence. About this I shall say something hereafter. I remained at this school until I had acquired all the learning my father thought necessary for my future position, as he intended it to be, and much more than I thought necessary, unless I was to get my living by teaching Latin and Greek. |
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