Part 837), are these words, printed as I give them below:

“‘GUILTY. _He then PLEADED GUILTY to a conviction of obtaining goods by false pretenses at this Court on February 26, 1896. Judgment respited._’

“Pleaded guilty to a former conviction! Adolf Beck pleaded guilty to nothing. How could he plead guilty, being an innocent man! He cried aloud when the charge of the first conviction was read aloud to him, ‘As God is my witness, I was innocent then as I am innocent now.’

“The epilogue to the tragedy of our English Dreyfus is written in those damning words in the Sessions Paper, the official minutes of evidence in Central Criminal Court trials.

“Beck’s last hope had perished. Once more a merciless fate had blinded the eyes and closed the ears of Justice to his innocence. He was to be immured in a convict cell for ten, perhaps for fourteen, years; he was to pass the closing years of his life a branded felon amid all the horrors of a convict prison. In all human probability he would die without ever seeing the light of freedom again, for he could not have borne this second torture.

“His voice, crying aloud for freedom, would be heard no more. Petitions for a reinvestigation of his case would be hopeless. He had been robbed of his last earthly chance of proving his innocence.

“Those words, ‘The prisoner pleaded guilty to a former conviction,’ would have damned him to the last day of his life.

“My painful task is ended.

“A foreigner, a stranger within our gates, a man of kindly heart and gentle ways, has been foully wronged. There is but one reparation we can make him. The people of this country owe him a testimonial of sympathy that shall endure and remain. On the site of his martyrdom there should rise a national monument. Let that monument take the form of a Court of Criminal Appeal. That is the one reparation that the English people can make to Adolf Beck for the foul wrong he has suffered in their midst.”

In a sense the innocent man who is hanged may be regarded as better off than he who is called upon to endure lifelong imprisonment. There are plenty of examples of these judicial murders. Over a score of undoubted cases occurred in the first two decades of the last century, and since then there have been twice as many more. A notorious and awful case was that of Eliza Fenning, who, at eighteen years of age, was sent to the gallows upon the perjured evidence of an accomplice of the real murderer. The latter afterward confessed.

Another similar case occurred in 1850, when a man named Ross was executed for poisoning his young wife by mixing arsenic with her food. A few years later certain facts came to light, proving conclusively that the real criminal was a female acquaintance and confidante of the dead woman.

Thomas Perryman, again, was found guilty in 1879 of the murder of his aged mother on the very flimsiest of evidence. His sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and in the ordinary course of events he should now be free. More than 100,000 people have, at different times, petitioned for the release of this convict, and the highest judicial authorities have expressed their belief in his entire innocence of the crime imputed to him. Yet he has been compelled to drink his terrible cup to the bitter dregs.

In 1844 a gentleman named Barker was sentenced to penal servitude for life for a forgery of which he was afterward proved to have been wholly innocent. He served four years, and was then released and readmitted to practise as an attorney. In 1859, eleven years after having been “pardoned,” he was, upon the recommendation of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, voted a sum of £5,000, “as a national acknowledgment of the wrong he had suffered from an erroneous prosecution.”

The famous Edlingham case will doubtless be fresh in the minds of most people. In February, 1879, the village vicarage was entered by burglars, and a determined attempt was made to murder the aged incumbent. For this outrage two men, Brannagham and Murphy, were sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. After a lapse of nine years the crime was confessed to by two well-known criminals named Richardson and Edgell, the result being that the innocent convicts were released, with an honorarium of £800 apiece.

The eminent King’s Counsel, Sir George Lewis, has openly said that he will not allow himself to speak of the way in which the “Edalji” trial was conducted, and he further adds: “I have it on undoubted authority that every ‘M.P.’ connected with the legal profession believes as I do that that man is innocent. And yet a declaration from such a source is allowed by the public to pass unnoticed. As I have before stated, ‘it is not the business of the public, nor of individual citizens, to prove the innocence of any unhappy person whom the process of law selects for punishment; but it is the business of every citizen to see that the courts incontestably prove the guilt of any person accused of a crime before sentence is passed.’ Neither condition was fulfilled in the case of the prisoner. I have studied the evidence, and say, from knowledge gained by fifteen years’ association with criminals, that this unfortunate young man is _innocent_.” Surely after the disclosures of the Adolf Beck case this one, on the word of Sir George Lewis, ought to receive unbiased consideration from the Home Office.