[1015] There is something dreadful in the thought of the old man quietly going on with his daily life within a few hundred yards of this shocking scene of slaughter, this ‘legal massacre,’ to use his own words (ante, p. 188, note 3).  England had a kind of Reign of Terror of its own; little thought of at the time or remembered since.  Twenty-four men were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey Sessions that ended on April 28.  On June 16 nine of these had the sentence commuted; the rest were hanged this day.  Among these men was not a single murderer.  Twelve of them had committed burglary, two a street robbery, and one had personated another man’s name, with intent to receive his wages. Ann.  Reg. xxvii, 193, and Gent.  Mag. liv. 379, 474.  The Gent.  Mag. recording the sentences, remarks:—­’Convicts under sentence of death in Newgate and the gaols throughout the kingdom increase so fast, that, were they all to be executed, England would soon be marked among the nations as the Bloody Country.’  In the spring assizes the returns are given for ten towns.  There were 88 capital convictions, of which 21 were at Winchester. Ib. 224.  In the summer assizes and at the Old Bailey Sessions for July there were 149 capital convictions.  At Maidstone a man on being sentenced ’gave three loud cheers, upon which the judge gave strict orders for his being chained to the floor of the dungeon.’ Ib. pp. 311, 633.  The hangman was to grow busier yet.  This increase in the number of capital punishments was attributed by Romilly in great part to Madan’s Thoughts on Executive Justice; ’a small tract, in which, by a mistaken application of the maxim “that the certainty of punishment is more efficacious than its severity for the prevention of crimes,” he absurdly insisted on the expediency of rigidly enforcing, in every instance, our penal code, sanguinary and barbarous as it was.  In 1783, the year before the book was published, there were executed in London only 51 malefactors; in 1785, the year after the book was published, there were executed 97; and it was recently after the publication of the book that was exhibited a spectacle unseen in London for a long course of years before, the execution of nearly 20 criminals at a time.’ Life of Romilly, i. 89.  Madan’s Tract was published in the winter of 1784-5.  Boswell’s fondness for seeing executions is shewn, ante, ii. 93.

[1016] See ante, ii. 82, 104; iii. 290; and v. 7l.

[1017] A friend of mine happened to be passing by a field congregation in the environs of London, when a Methodist preacher quoted this passage with triumph.  BOSWELL.  On Dec. 26, 1784, John Wesley preached the condemned criminals’ sermon to forty-seven who were under sentence of death.  He records:—­’The power of the Lord was eminently present, and most of the prisoners were in tears.  A few days after, twenty of them died at once, five of whom died in peace.  I could not but greatly approve of the spirit and behaviour of Mr. Villette, the Ordinary; and I rejoiced to hear that it was the same on all similar occasions.’  Wesley’s Journal, ed. 1827, iv. 287.