Law reformers in England will be forced ere long to
adopt a hint from Indian jurisprudence, and make torture a specific offence, apart alike from aggravated assault and from murder. Last week a farmer at Wellington, in Somersetshire, was convicted of an offence absolutely without a precedent. He had an elderly woman as servant, who, either from ill-health or laziness—she pleaded the one, and he alleged the other— did her work badly. He therefore commenced the ordinary course of torture, kicking her, beating her, pouring cold water over her in bed, and forcing dirt down her mouth. These remedies not succeeding, he made his wife get a honeycomb full of bees and force that into her mouth, standing by in glee as the bees stung her. The magistrates sentenced him to six months' imprisonment with hard labour—less than is oftea given at the sessions for stealing a piece of meat. But while London magistrates sentence a woman to two months' im- prisonment for biting a rival's face, there is little hope of the horror of cruelty extending into country towns.
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