to crimes; the punishment most commonly prescribed by it was death.123 The penal code of China, though less cruel in various respects than the European legislation of the eighteenth century, awards death for a third and aggravated theft, for defacing the branding inflicted for former offences,124 and for privately casting copper coin;125 whilst for the commission of the most heinous crimes the penalty is “to be cut into ten thousand pieces,” which appears to amount, at least, to a license to the executioner to aggravate and prolong the sufferings of the criminal by any species of cruelty he may think proper to inflict.126 In Japan, before the revolution of 1871, “the punishments for crime had been both rigorous and cruel; death was the usual punishment, and death accompanied by tortures was the penalty for aggravated crimes.127 According to the Mosaic law, death is inflicted for such offences as breach of the Lord’s day,128 going to wizards,129 eating the fat of a beast of sacrifice,130 eating blood,131 approaching unto a woman “as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness,”132 and various kinds of sexual offences.133 The laws of Manu provide capital punishment for those who forge royal edicts and corrupt royal ministers;134 for those who break into a royal store-house, an armoury, or a temple, and those who steal elephants, horses, or chariots;135 for thieves who are taken with the stolen goods and the implements of burglary;136 for cut-purses on the third conviction;137 whilst a wife, who, proud of the greatness of her relatives or her own excellence, violates the duty which she owes to her lord, shall be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many, and the male offender shall be burnt on a red-hot iron bed.138
118 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 454.
119 Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 358.
120 Ibid. i. 359.
121 Ibid. i. 355.
122 Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 465 sq.
123 Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 145, 151 sq.
124 Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom, i. 512.
125 Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. ccclix. p. 397.
126 Ibid. sec. ccliv. p. 269 n. †
127 Reed, Japan, i. 323. Thunberg, Travels, iv. 65.
128 Exodus, xxxi. 14.
129 Leviticus, xx. 6.
130 Ibid. vii. 25.
131 Ibid. vii. 27.
132 Ibid. xviii. 19.
133 Ibid. xviii. 6 sqq.
134 Laws of Manu, ix. 232.
135 Ibid. ix. 280.
136 Ibid. ix. 270.
137 Ibid. ix. 277.
138 Ibid. viii. 371 sq.
Increasing severity has been a characteristic of European legislation up to quite modern times. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the English law knows some seven crimes which it treats as capital, namely, treason, homicide, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, and grand larceny; but the number of capital offences grew rapidly.139 From the Restoration to the death of George III.—a period of 160 years—no less than 187 such offences, wholly different in character and degree, were added to the criminal code; and when, in 1837, the punishment of death was removed from about 200 crimes, it was still left applicable to exactly the same offences as were capital at the end of the thirteenth century.140 Pocket-picking was punishable with death until the year 1808;141 horse-stealing, cattle-stealing, sheep-stealing, stealing from a dwelling-house, and forgery, until 1832;142 letter-stealing and sacrilege, until 1835;143 rape, until 1841;144 robbery with violence, arson of dwelling-houses, and sodomy, until 1861.145 And not only was human life recklessly sacrificed, but the mode of execution was often exceedingly cruel. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Peine forte et dure, or pressing to death with every aggravation of torture, was adopted as a manner of punishment suitable to cases where the accused refused to plead.146 Burning alive of female offenders still occurred in England at the end of the eighteenth century,147 being considered by the framers of the law as a commutation of the sentence of hanging required by decency.148 Still more cruel was the punishment inflicted on male traitors: they were first hanged by the neck and cut down before life was extinct, their entrails were taken out and burned before their face, then they were beheaded and quartered, and the quarters were set up in diverse places.149