text:  Let him enquire and he will find that "the former days" of England were days of discord tyranny and oppression; days when an Empson and a Dudley could harass the honest and well-disposed through the medium of the process of the odious star-chamber; when the crown was possessed of almost arbitrary power and when the liberty and personal independence of individuals were in no way considered or regarded; days when the severity of our criminal laws drew down from a French philosopher the sneer that a history of England was a history of the executioner; when the doomed were sent out of the world in bands of twenty and even thirty at a time at Tyburn or at "Execution dock;" and when in the then unhealthy tone of public morals criminals famous for their deeds of violence and rapine were regarded rather as the heroes of romance than as the pests and scourges of society