hment. The execution of Mark
and Phillis took place just about the time that Blackstone was
delivering his lectures at Oxford, which have since given him an
enduring and world-wide fame as a commentator on the laws of England.
This elegant defender and apologist for English laws and customs, in
his commentaries, admits, seemingly with reluctance and regret, that
there then existed on the statute-books of England no less than one
hundred and sixty capital offences. At that time the number of capital
offences in Massachusetts was less than one-tenth this number, if we
exclude those made so by the acts relating to military offenders in
actual service, and felonies on the high seas, and a few others,
which, like the latter, were created by including among capital crimes
certain offences which, though theretofore exempt from the death
penalty by special circumstances and technical rules, had always been
capitally punished when committed under other and not less justifiable
circumstances.

Said Isaac Backus, whom I find to be a very trustworthy authority, in
a letter to this Society, under date of Feb. 20, 1794, "There has not
been any person hanged in Plymouth County for above these sixty years
past."[26] More than a century earlier, John Dunton mentions a sermon
of Mather's, preached at the execution of "Morgan, the only person
executed in that country [Massachusetts] for near seven years."[27] He
must, however, I think, have forgotten the case of Maria, the negro
woman.

[Footnote 26: 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 152.]

[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, 2d series, vol. ii. p. 102.]

Again, when the English riot act (1 Geo. I. stat. 2, ch. 5) was
substantially adopted by the Province in 1751, the legislature
studiously avoided the harshness of the former act by substituting
forfeiture of lands and chattels, and whipping and imprisonment, for
the death penalty.[28]

[Footnote 28: Compare provincial statute 1750-51, ch. 17 (Prov. Laws,
vol. iii. p. 540), with the act of parliament referred to.]

In 1761 Governor Bernard vainly labored with his utmost zeal to secure
the passage of an act or acts making it felony, without benefit of
clergy, to forge public and private securities or vouchers for money,
or to coin or counterfeit the current money of the Province. He sent a
special message upon the subject to the Assembly, in which he
stated:--

"In regard to the popular prejudices against capital
punishments which h