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Madan's Tract was published in the winter of 1784-5. Boswell's fondness for seeing executions is shewn, ante, ii. 93. See ante, ii. 82, 104; iii. 290; and v. 7l. A friend of mine happened to be passing by a field congregation in the environs of London, when a Methodist preacher quoted this passage with triumph.
Two or three of his fellows gathered round him. "Aye," said one of them, out of Madan's hearing, "ee's been a-squeezing of us through the ground, ee ave, but ee's a plucky lot, is the boss." "They do say as Burrers slanged 'im fine at the station yesterday," said another, hoarsely. "Called 'im the devil untied, one man told me."
Burrows meanwhile was wielding a pick with the rest, and George envied him the bodily skill and strength that, in spite of his irregular ways of life, were still left to him. To restore the ventilation-current was their first object, and the foremost pick had no sooner gained the roadway on the other side than a strong movement of the air was perceptible. Madan's face cleared.
In this case, he lived only a mile away, on the further side of the village, so that Madan's messenger had not far to go. As he spoke, George felt his arm clutched from behind. He turned, and saw Mary Batchelor, who had come forward from a group of women. "Sir George! Listen 'ere, Sir George." Her lined face and tear-blurred eyes worked with a passion of entreaty.
"Send word at once to Lady Tressady," he said, in Madan's ear, drawing the manager to one side. "Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the other men as safe as these." Madan acquiesced reluctantly.
This increase in the number of capital punishments was attributed by Romilly in great part to Madan's Thoughts on Executive Justice; 'a small tract, in which, by a mistaken application of the maxim "that the certainty of punishment is more efficacious than its severity for the prevention of crimes," he absurdly insisted on the expediency of rigidly enforcing, in every instance, our penal code, sanguinary and barbarous as it was.
Madan's famous book called "Thylipthora, or a Defence of Polygamy", with which they were prodigiously taken, and talked very freely of reducing the system to practice. Cornwallis, it seems, was to be a bashaw of three tails Rawdon and Tarleton, of two each and as a natural appendage of such high rank, they were to have their seraglios and harems filled with the greatest beauties of the country.
By this time, however, Burrows was biting his lip, and very conscious that he had made an impulsive mistake. "Don't imagine for a moment," he said hotly, "that Madan's opinion of anything I may be doing matters one brass farthing to me! Only I give you and him fair warning that if he blackguards me again in the way he has done several times lately, I shall have him bound over."
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