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to his own judgment. He had found examples which directed, guided, and assured his steps. In the year 1750, there had been a committee appointed by the House on this momentous subject, in consequence of an alarm excited by the increase of crimes. The committee was instructed to examine and report as to the defects, amendments, or repeal of capital laws. What would the Noble Lord say to this attack on the laws of our ancestors? Was it made in bad times, by men of no note, and of bad principles? It was sufficient defence to state, that of the committee were, Mr Pelham, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, Mr Grenville, afterwards Lord Grenville, Mr Charles Townsend, and Mr Lloyd, both afterwards Chancellors of the Exchequer, and Mr Dudley Ryder names that should ever be distinguished by their country, as those of the best men and wisest statesmen. Two sessions of Parliament had been found necessary for the inquiry in that age, and the present age was surely far inferior to it in leading statesmen. Then, those great and enlightened statesmen had resolved, that it was reasonable to exchange the punishment of death for other punishments, This resolution was more general than he should now propose. They had been the first committee who denounced the poor laws as the nursery of crime; for at all times pauperism and criminality had advanced in parallel lines, and with equal steps. These men, too, practical men as they were, had ascribed the increase of crimes in a great measure to the neglect of the education of the children of the poor. A bill had been brought in upon those principles. He would not go through its history. It was not rejected in that House. In the

other House, Lord Hardwicke had not opposed it; nor had any Lords of great authority opposed that bill, the object of which was to substitute hard labour and imprisonment for death. On the 27th of November 1770, another committee of the same kind, among whom were Sir W. Meredith and Mr Fox, was appointed in consequence of the increase of a certain class of crimes. That committee had been occupied more than two years, with the same branch of inquiry which the Noble Lord proposed to add to the excessive labours of a committee on another subject. In the second session, a bill passed that House nem. con., abolishing eight capital statutes. He did not mean to enter into the history of this bill, but it had been thrown out in the Lords. Neither Lord Camden nor Lord Mansfield, however, had opposed it. The names of its opponents were forgotten. Upon those precedents he had formed and brought forward his motion. It could not be pretended even that the Noble Lord's motion could effect the purpose of the present motion, without invading the usage of Parliament. He might make his stand here, and call upon the Noble Lord to remove him from this position. But he would proceed. Last night the Noble Lord, in proposing a committee which was to inquire into the state of the Criminal Law of England, had contented himself with stating the existence of the evil, but hinted nothing respecting a remedy. Nothing had been said of the course which the Noble Lord was to propose to the committee. Nothing had been said of the defects of the Criminal Law. He had always understood that two things were to be proposed to every committee-to examine into the existence of the evil, and to judge of

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the probability of a remedy. stead of approaching the sacred fabric reared by our ancestors with lightness, as charged by the Noble Lord, he approached it with more solemnity and a greater reverence than his Lordship. He would not dare to touch it without a prospect of applying a remedy. He could not, indeed, point out any certain remedy. But a probable remedy, which every man felt to be most desirable, it had been his Lordship's bounden duty to have pointed out. He should not be told that he was a wild and rash speculator, for believing a remedy practicable; for in that age which the Noble Lord call ed the golden age of crimes, Sergeant Glyn, Recorder of London, both believed a remedy to be practicable, and recommended it as necessary. His object was not to introduce a new Criminal Code. Neither was it his object to abolish the punishment of death: that was a punishment to which society had a right, and which society required for its defence. It had been said, that he wished to deprive the Crown of one of its most envied prerogatives: this was a mistake. He was most anxious to restore to it what the practice of modern times had taken away from it. He should say, that he aimed at realizing no universal principle, but only at approaching general rules, which at all times had been found most convenient. He did not hope nor expect upon this subject to establish an uniformity, discoverable neither. in works of art nor in the productions of nature. His object was to bring the letter of the law nearer to its practice. He was not so idle as to expect, that it would be possible to obtain a system where execution must inevitably follow the sentence; but he and the country had great reason to complain of the existing

system, where the remission of punishment was the rule, and the enforcing of it the exception. He wished to carry the reformation of the law no further than long experience and the humane practice of modern times fully justified. In some particular inflictions, on which the feelings of good men were not in unison with the criminal law, he hoped to see some salutary alterations introduced: all good men in a well-regulated community ought to be ready and willing enforcers of the criminal law; and such an alteration would more than any thing else tend to restore that attachment to the laws which in the most tempestuous times of our history had distinguished the people of England among the nations of the world. Having concluded his general remarks, he should now enter into a few illustrative details. He admitted that the statement of the Noble Lord last night was, in the main, just and candid; and he agreed that the crimes in which so rapid an increase was observable, were not those of the blackest die, and of the most ferocious character, and that the ancient moral character of the nation was not stained or dishonoured: the crimes detailed in the documents were to be viewed rather as the result of the distresses than of the depravity of the community. He could not, however, concur in all that had fallen from the Noble Lord on the subject of temporary causes. Their discordance was in some cases a little whimsical, for the Noble Lord held those causes to be temporary, which he (Sir James Mackintosh) considered permanent, and those permanent which he deemed temporary. For instance, in the crime of forgery, which he only mentioned by way of illustration, he (Sir James Mackintosh) had hoped, that when cash payments were re

stored, that offence would be diminished; but the Noble Lord discouraged any such expectation, by asserting that the withdrawing of such a mass of paper from circulation would be attended with no such beneficial consequence. The Noble Lord had also mentioned the growth of manufactures: this must also be placed among the permanent causes, while our manufactures continued to flourish therefore, unless some remedy were found, our prosperity would be undermined by immorality. The Noble Lord had fallen into an error when speaking of the population of London: Although it was positively larger now than in the year 1700, it was relatively smaller it was not so populous now, with reference to the population of the whole kingdom, as in the reign of William III. Some other causes of criminality deserved attention, and, most of all, those which arose out of mistakes in measures of policy and legislation among these might be noticed the erroneous spirit out of which the laws had grown which had introduced a sort of contraband trade, and with it many of the seeds of vice had been sown. A smuggling traffic of another species, though with nearly the same effects, had been fostered by some of the existing laws relating to the revenue. He did not assert that the system could be changed at once; but it was singular that we were now in the fourth year of peace, and not a single step had been taken to inquire into the necessity of continuing one of the existing prohibitory duties, which were the nurseries of crimes of the most atrocious and ferocious nature. One subject, it would be unpardonable to omit. A slight attention to the returns would show, that the rapid increase of crimes commenced in the year 1808 after that date, they had

varied, but had never fallen lower than the standard then fixed; and it was extremely remarkable, and a most serious and alarming fact, that in that very year, the great issues of the Bank of England began. Soon after 1808, these issues reduced the value of the pound-note to 14s., and the labourer of course found his wages diminished, by no cause which he could discover or comprehend, at least in the proportion of one-third: the operation of the paper system was to him like the workings of some malignant fiend, which could only be traced in their effects. Was it possible to suppose that such a diminution of income among all classes had not produced a great increase of crime? The chief ground on which he arrived at the conclusion, that the criminal law was not so efficacious as it might be by temperate and prudent measures, was, that the practice and the letter were not only deviated from, but actually at variance with, each other. It was a well-known fact, that about 200 capital felonies were to be found in the law of England; but within the last seventy years executions had been enforced on only twentyfive of them: so that upon 175 capital felonies the punishment ordered by statute had not been inflicted. In England and Wales (as to which the returns did not come down to so recent a date), convictions, setting aside executions, had only proceeded upon thirty so that there were no less than 170 felonies upon which no conviction ever had been had. In the mean time, the discordance between the law and the practice had continued to increase, and had perhaps grown most rapidly in some of the most glorious periods of our history. The greatest change produced by the revolution of 1688 was what niight be termed the establishment of a parliamentary go

vernment. Yet it had been attended with one important inconvenience -the unhappy facility afforded to legislation. An anecdote, confirmatory of this statement, was told by Mr Burke in the early part of his public career he was about to leave the House, when he was detained by a gentleman who wished him to remain. Mr Burke pleaded urgent business, and the reply of the individual who held him was, that the subject on which the House was engaged would very soon be dismissed, as it was only upon the subject of a capital felony, without benefit of clergy! Mr Burke bad afterwards stated, that he had no doubt that he could without difficul ty have obtained the assent of the House to any bill he brought in for capital punishment. This facility had greatly contributed to impair and enervate the whole system of the criminal law. With this augmentation of needless severity, the humanity of the Government and of the nation had also advanced: both naturally revolted from the enforcement of laws which had been so inconsider ately obtained, and which was partially the result of a system of perverse and malignant accidents. This most singular and most injurious opposition of the enactments of the Legislature, and the enforcement of those enactments, had attracted the attention of a distinguished individual, who was no longer a member of the House, but who united in himself all qualities to render himself one of its greatest ornaments: that individual (we presume Sir W. Grant) had given his great authority for the assertion, that the law and the prac tice were diametrically opposite. On one occasion particularly, when his attention was called to the subject, he had said, that it was impossible that both the law and the practice could be right one of the conflicting bodies must be wrong, and as the

law might be brought to an accordance with the practice, but the practice could never be compelled to join in the severity of the law, the law ought to be altered for a wiser and more humane system. At another time the same individual had well observed, that there was a confederacy between judges, juries, counsel, prosecutors, witnesses, and the advisers of the Crown, to prevent the execution of the criminal laws. Was it then fit that that system should continue, which the whole body of the intelligent community united and conspired to oppose as a disgrace to our nature and nation? He wished to advert shortly to what had fallen from the Noble Lord, on the point how far these crimes were occasioned by a change from a state of war. In the Seven Years' War, indeed, crimes augmented, and decreased after its termination; but they had been more numerous in the seven years preceding the American war, and continued to advance, not only during those hostilities, but after peace had been restored. It was, however, quite correct to state, that there was no augmentation that much outran the progress of population until about the last twenty years; and that was capable of being accounted for without any loss to the ancient and peculiar probity of the British character. The most rapid increase had occurred within the last ten years, and Lord Rosslyn was the first Lord Chancellor under whose administration the great diminution of executions, as compared with the convictions, was to be remarked. Under Lord Thurlow, no material change in this respect was observa. ble; but the gentle disposition and the liberality of the early principles of Lord Rosslyn had induced him to recommend many to the mercy of the Crown. Soon afterwards, the executions compared with the convic

tions were reduced to one-third, subsequently to half, and finally, to oneeleventh. There was one statement of the Noble Lord to which he (Sir J. Mackintosh) wished here to advert. Dividing crimes into different kinds, it would be found that to eight or nine the diminution of executions did not apply; with regard to them even now the executions usually amounted to about half the number of convictions in the lesser felonies the ratio was 1 in 20, 1 in 30, and even I in 60. He agreed, that the discre. tion at present exercised ought to be continued in the crimes of burglary and highway robbery; but it was, on the part of the Noble Lord, doing injustice to the general argument, to throw together all degrees and sorts of felonies, and to deduce from the whole a general average: they ought to be divided into classes, and the last would be found to consist of a prodigious number of felonies, on which there had been no executions at all. For the sake of clearness he would say, that he would separate the numerous felonies into three classes: the first would consist of murder and murderous offences those that attacked life and limb, or put the former to imminent hazard: the second would be composed of arson, highway robbery, piracy, and some other felonies of a similar degree of atrocity, upon which at present the law was carried into execution in a great many cases. Upon those two divisions, he would admit for the present, that it would be unsafe to propose any alteration: they ought still to be punished with death, and he believed that a patient and calm investigation would remove the objections of a number of well-meaning persons who were of a contrary opinion. But there was still a third class, some connected with frauds of various kinds, but others, nearly to

the amount of 150, of a most frivolous and fantastic kind, which were never carried into execution, and it was absurd to suppose could in the present day be executed; for when executed in one or two instances in former times, they had excited the disgust and horror of all good men. There could be no doubt, even the Noble Lord he apprehended would not dispute, that they ought to be expunged from the statute book as a disgrace to our law. Would any man now think of punishing with death the offence of cutting a hop-vine, or destroying an ornamental tree? The Black-act, as it was called, created about twenty felonies, some of them of the most absurd description. Bearing particular weapons, having the face blacked, or being found disguised upon the high road, was a capital crime; so that if a gentleman was going to a masquerade, and was obliged to pass along a highway, he was liable, when detected, to be hanged without benefit of clergy. In the same way, destroying the head of a fish-pond was a felony; and many others, the relics of barbarous times, and disgraceful to the character of a thinking and enlightened people. It ought to be recollected also, that for such offences as these, punishments quite adequate and sufficiently numerous remained, which by the wisdom of Parliament might be ordered to be inflicted. It could not be asserted that such capital inflictions were not needless in cases like those to which he had referred, and in many others; and he trusted that he (Sir J. Mackintosh) should never live to see the day when any member would rise in that House and maintain that a punishment avowedly needless ought to be continued. The debateable ground was afforded by a sort of middle class of offences, consisting of larcenies

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