6
His mode of execution being perfectly novel, and at the same time ingenious, Curran said, "The lieutenant should have got a patent for cheap strangulation."
7
The lieutenant's brother being a Crown solicitor, had now and then got the lieutenant to copy the high treason indictments: and he, seeing there that imagining the death of a king was punished capitally, very naturally conceived that wishing it was twice as bad as supposing it: having therefore no doubt that all rebels wished it, he consequently decided in the tribunal of his own mind to hang every man who hypothetically and traitorously wished his majesty's dissolution, which wish he also conceived was very easily ascertained by the wisher's countenance.
A cabinet-maker, at Charing Cross, some years ago, put on his board "patent coffin-maker to his majesty:" it was considered that though this was not an ill-intentioned, yet it was a very improper mode of imagining the king's death, and the board was taken down accordingly. Lieutenant H. would surely have hanged him in Ireland.