calendar, and to say that he feared that they were referable to the
comparative infrequency of Capital Punishment.

It is not incompatible with the utmost deference and respect for an
authority so eminent, to say that, in this, Mr. Justice Coleridge
was not supported by facts, but quite the reverse. He went out of
his way to found a general assumption on certain very limited and
partial grounds, and even on those grounds was wrong. For among the
few crimes which he instanced, murder stood prominently forth. Now
persons found guilty of murder are more certainly and unsparingly
hanged at this time, as the Parliamentary Returns demonstrate, than
such criminals ever were. So how can the decline of public
executions affect that class of crimes? As to persons committing
murder, and yet not found guilty of it by juries, they escape solely
because there are many public executions--not because there are none
or few.

But when I submit that a criminal judge is an excellent witness
against Capital Punishment, but a bad witness in its favour, I do so
on more broad and general grounds than apply to this error in fact
and deduction (so I presume to consider it) on the part of the
distinguished judge in question. And they are grounds which do not
apply offensively to judges, as a class; than whom there are no
authorities in England so deserving of general respect and
confidence, or so possessed of it; but which apply alike to all men
in their several degrees and pursuits.

It is certain that men contract a general liking for those things
which they have studied at great cost of time and intellect, and
their proficiency in which has led to their becoming distinguished