to give their opinions, and use every effort to carry them into effect. From some accidental circumstance perhaps, the report seemed to be drawn up in haste and with inaccuracy, which prevented his giving that credit to its recommendations, which the great talents of the gentlemen who drew it up ought to entitle it to. The present measure should be looked to as to its results. The forgery of a will was one of those things which might ruin a whole family, and the capital punishment in this case was proposed to be rescinded. The forgery of a marriage register, which might affect not only a family, but the legitimacy of the issue, their credit and their honour, was also to be altered; but he asked, would the house repeal the capital punishment in such cases? In the forgery of deeds and transfer of stock, affecting the rights of individuals both as to property and character, they would all be altered if the proposed bill passed into a law. He mentioned these things to show the caution with which the house should proceed in the discussion of this very important subject. In looking to the preamble of the proposed measure, where one usually looks to see the reasons for its enactment, the only reason assigned was, that the present law was ineffectual for its object, the repression of forgery. So far as his experience enabled him to pronounce an opinion, the contrary was the case. He contended, the law as it now stood, did more by its terror to prevent the crime of forgery, than if the proposed measure of his honourable and learned friend were carried. He was now naturally led to con

sider the nature of the punishment intended by the projected bill. The object of punishment was to prevent crime by its terrors, and the bill before them was to substitute transportation for death, in all cases of forgery, except for notes of the Bank of England. Now, he asked what was transportation? The fact was, it was scarcely considered a punishment. So much did hope and adventure operate on the human mind, that when sentence of transportation. was pronounced on many prisoners, they turned round to the judge, and thanked him most kindly. His learned friend said, he did not intend confining the punishment for forgery to transportation; hard labour, long imprisonment, and other penalties might be added. But no such punishments now existed, and, according to the best practical experience, the fear of hard labour did not deter men from the commission of great crimes, especially when a great pecuniary reward would be the result. In France and other countries, private forgeries were not punished with death; but in France, owing to the peculiar establishment of their police, they could more effectually detect them than we could; but the English people's habits and enjoyment of liberty under the blessings of a free constitution, would never suffer the introduction of any such system. He should now conclude the imperfect observations he had made by moving, that this bill be committed this day six months.

Mr. F. Buxton said, how the honourable and learned gentleman could assume that no secondary punishment could be discovered,

he

he was wholly at a loss to know. Were there not the hulks, an account of which was so regularly transmitted to the secretary for the home department? Was there not imprisonment with rigid la. bour and certain periods of solitary confinement-the very measure which would prove the most efficient? They had gone on long enough with the false notion, that the punishment of death restrained crime; but the question was, had what the law designed to do been done? A century proved the growth of our criminal laws, which had increased four-fold. And of all the bulky volumes of statutes then on the table, only three of them were passed before the year 1700, during which time not only the greatest liberty, but the greatest licentiousness of legislation existed. If the increase of laws were held to be the best means of preventing crime, then it should follow as a matter of course, that the present times, being distinguished by a severity of punishment, would also be followed by a rarity of crime. It appeared by papers which had been placed on that table, that there had passed through the prisons of the United Kingdom during the year 1818, not less than 107,000 persons. Was this number of criminals any symptom of a successful system? There was also another fact equally important: it had appeared that in the metropolis alone, there were no less than 8 or 10,000 children who earned their daily bread by their daily pilfering, and who, though at present engaged in petty robberies, would at length become the most dangerous enemies of society. Reasoning on this fact alone, and leaving, as

the honourable gentleman had invited them to do, all party feeling out of the question, he would ask, was this an evidence of a successful law? How came it, that in France, a country which contained 29 millions of inhabitants, and a police which suffered no offender to escape, there should be fewer criminals than in England, a country which contained only 11 millions of inhabitants, and a police which comparatively apprehended very few offenders? He would now put the question to the house in that manner which would occur to the mind of any person, who came to the consideration of the subject in a temper totally impartial. Would not such a person naturally first ask whether a system of prevention had been tried at all, and whether the scale upon which it had been tried furnished a fair conclusion as to its efficacy? Certainly such a system had been tried; and that it had been tried upon a scale sufficiently large, appeared from an observation of that law, which made the penalty exactly the same for killing a father and killing a rabbit. The next question then that occurred was, Has crime been prevented? Have offences decreased, or have they not been quadrupled in the course of the last forty years? It might be said, that the plan of mitigation of punishment had been tried, and had failed of success; that it had been adopted with regard to the offence of stealing from the person, and that that crime had since increased. He would also submit, that every species of crime and every species of punishment had increased in a similar manner; and therefore all that was necessary for him to show

was,

was, that the crime of privately stealing from the person, on which the experiment had been made, had not increased in a greater ratio than other crimes. In fact, that was the case; and if it then appeared, that under the mitigated penalty the crime had not been more frequent than when subject to the capital punishment, he would say that the infliction of death was but a cruel, though a legal murder. But, as if to place the question beyond doubt, two experiments had already been made on the subject, and more conclusive experiments could not have been made,-for in one case they had proceeded from lenity to rigour; and in the other from rigour to lenity. The crime of forgery had been made a capital offence; and in another case capital punishment had been done away with, and a less severe punishment adopted. The system of proceeding from lenity to rigour had been adopted for the protection of the excise. The forgery of the stamps of excise had been made a capital offence; and the only question at present was, whether the new system had succeeded in preventing the commission of that crime? On this point the committee had availed themselves of the assistance of the best evidence that could have been procured, for they had examined the solicitor of the excise. That gentleman had told them that the new system had completely failed, and had added, that all severe enactments against breaches of the excise laws only assisted the fraudulent trader, whilst the fair dealer remained unprotected. He had stated, that there were now fewer convictions,

(with about half the number of prosecutions) than there had been under the old law; that formerly out of twenty-one prisoners about nineteen had been convicted; but that since the introduction of the new law, at least three prisoners in ten had been acquitted, and the rest had generally escaped without punishment. Now he would put it to the house, what would be the consequence upon the minds of offenders, when they saw that under the old law all offences had been strictly punished, and that under the present law, though the punishment was greater, yet that there was little likelihood of its ever being inflicted.

It was a remarkable fact, that crimes had increased greatly since they had been declared capital in England, when compared with other countries, or with itself at former periods; and yet the laws of England were more severe than at any former period; for the less atrocious crimes were punishable capitally in this country, and not elsewhere. It was extraordinary to find that this country was distinguished for two opposite things, the severest laws and the greatest increase of crime. Some learned gentlemen might, as had already been done, reason upon the good old law of the land; but to them he would merely say, that the old law had been of no such description. He would support his assertion by facts. The code of Alfred, which was yet in existence, had enacted that all the crimes punishable with death under the jewish laws should be visited with a less punishment, as that dreadful penalty was ill suited to the christian dispensation.

Even the Danes

Danes, all eager as they had been for the destruction of every Anglo-Saxon institution, had retained that principle of legislation. William the conquerer, in his two codes, one soon after his arrival, and the other before his death, forbade the infliction of death. At the commencement of the last century the number of capital offences by the law of England had been seventy, and 150 had been added to that number within that century; so that, with the increase since 1800, the number of the capital offences had been nearly quadrupled since 1700. Within the last year, 640 men had been condemned to death, and some of them executed under the enactments of that period. To the present cruel code the people were averse, and they declined to have it put into execution; for to the great body of the people those enactments which ordained death as a punishment for comparatively not equally atrocious crimes, were obnoxious in the extreme. He appealed to the experience of each honourable member for the truth of that observation. What was the effect of the present system on the consciences of the jurymen? From the session papers the most extraordinary cases could be quoted, in which lace and other valuable articles had been declared to be of not more than 39s. value; in other instances of only 5s. value. He could quote from proceedings at the old bailey 12,000 cases in which those pious perjuries had been committed in order to avoid the dreadful punishment of the law. In some instances the bank note which had been stolen from a desk broken by the thief, had

been supposed to have moved by itself into the street, in order to save the unfortunate culprit from the punishment of death. It was a fact that the laws themselves promoted the growth of crimes; they first were the means of ensnaring the criminal, who afterwards became its victim. The prisons, too, were so managed as to perpetuate the existence of guilt. He must also observe, that the state of the police was a disgrace to the country. The fact was, that we placed our dependence on the hangman, while we forgot to use measures to prevent the commission of offences. The facility for the commencement of a guilty career was so easy, the path so smooth, added to the exemption of juvenile offences from punishment, that they were led on, from step to step, until they were prepared for the basest deeds. He concluded by im. pressing upon the house, that they were called upon to support the bills by force of public opinion, and to prevent the multiplication of forgery; they were called upon by the principles of that religion which "desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live."

Mr. Bright said, with respect to the laws against forgery; he was convinced that they were not more severe than necessary.

Mr. J. Smith observed, that many cases of forgery were committed by persons most artless and ignorant, who were not aware at the time they were doing what was wrong, and who were not therefore proper subjects for capital punishment.

Mr. R. Martin said, that the petitions

petitions laid on the table shewed that the feeling of the public was against the severity of punishment in cases of forgery. It was impossible that the present sanguinary code of laws should be carried into execution, because jurors themselves had stated undisguisedly that they were indisposed to find persons guilty under the present system of highly penal punishments. He himself had,

in the instance of an individual whom he had raised from poverty to comparative affluence as a collector of revenue, to complain of a base act of ingratitude. This party had forged upon him acceptances to the amount of 30001.; yet notwithstanding he could have proved the fact, he preferred incurring the crime of a compounding of the felony, rather than to prosecute the offender.

Dr. Lushington narrated the circumstance which had occurred about eighteen years ago, of a boy of previously extraordinary good character, who had by'accident passed the old bailey during an execution, and being stimulated by curiosity, inquired what was the nature of the offence for which the unhappy man suffered? He was told it was for having committed a forgery on his master. So far from being appalled by the fate of this offender, this boy returned to his master's house, not far from the place of execution, and that very day actually committed a forgery on his master. So much for the probability of the extreme rigour of punishment for this offence being likely to deter persons from committing it. Cases had lately occurred at Chester, Stafford, and Durham assizes, where persous had been left for execu

tion for crimes of which they were happily discovered afterward to be innocent, in sufficient time to save their lives. He stated that a great deal of the evil complained of, arose out of the practice of the officers permitting the haunts of thieves, pickpockets, and vagabonds, to remain unmolested, with a view to secure to themselves an opportunity to lay hold at pleasure on those for whose apprehension a sufficient reward might be offered.

Mr. Nolan doubted much whether an indisposition to prosecute existed in the public. Crimes punished lightly, it had been found, increased more than such as were punished with death. He was anxious to rescue juries from the imputation cast on them of an inclination to commit perjury rather than convict.

After some remarks by Mr. W. Wynn, and Mr. Courtenay

The marquis of Londonderry said, the great question now was, as to the most efficacious way of preventing forgery. Though he should vote against the bill at present, he would not have it considered that he was averse to mitigation of punishment if it should hereafter appear, upon mature inquiry, that the crime could be as effectually prevented by other means. vention went, the conclusion to be drawn from the evidence laid before the committee was-that where the law was strictly enforced, as in forgeries on individuals, the crime diminished; and increased where punishment was not sure to follow, as in forgeries on the bank of England for one pound notes. The uncertainty of punishment in the latter case

So far as pre

arose