and consolidation of the criminal laws.-That Commission has not yet terminated its labours; nor do we know when it will. That Commission has already cost the country £15,300; of which £10,200 was voted in July, 1835, and £5,100 in May, 1836. The second report of that Commission, which was ordered to be printed, by the House of Commons, in June of last year, is now before us. We need hardly add that no practical result whatever has yet followed from the Commission, which has cost the country so much. It has certainly given two ponderous volumes of theoretic disquisition, of commentary, suggestions and evidence, to the public-being at the rate of £7,650 per volume. When we look at the magnitude and weight of those tomes, which are intended to "simplify" the process of legislation, we may well ask whether another Commission will not be necessary to revise and consolidate the labours of the Commissioners? +

[The article in the text was written six years ago, and the same Commission is yet in existence, having been renewed on the demise of the Crown in 1837. The Commissioners were originally appointed "to digest into one statute all the statutes and enactments touching crimes, and the trial and punishment thereof :"-" also to digest into one other statute all the provisions of the common or unwritten law touching the same :"-and " to report how far it might be expedient to combine both those statutes into one body of criminal law," or "to pass into a law the first-mentioned only of the said statutes; and generally to inquire and report how far it might be expedient to consolidate the other branches of the existing statute-law, or any of them." Thus their instructions were to consolidate the existing lawnot to mitigate its sanguinary spirit. Nevertheless, in their Second Report, dated 9th June, 1836, the Commissioners ventured to recommend the abolition of capital punishment, except in eight classes of crime (treason included, p. 32) : in regard to which eight classes, they said, "We are of opinion, that it is desirable, if it be practicable, that death should be invariably inflicted agreeably to the dispositions of the law, subject only to the exercise of the Royal prerogative of mercy." Notwithstanding this opinion of the Commissioners, we find that from the end of that year (1836), down to the present time, no executions, except those for murder and three for attempts to murder, have been permitted to take place-public opinion having been opposed too strongly. The Commissioners have recently issued their Seventh Report. It is dated 11th March, 1843. They therein provide an ample scale of graduated penalties, in number no less than forty-five. Their first or highest penalty is, as heretofore, that for Treason. Here it is:

"The offender, if a male, shall be drawn on a hurdle to the place "of execution, and be there hanged by the neck until he be dead, and

For our own part, we have been now for seven or eight years labouring to bring about such a thorough, and efficient reform of the criminal laws, as would be creditable to the intellect of the country, and worthy the advanced state of its civilization in other respects. We have furnished abundance of materials for that purpose-we mean for the reform of the spirit and the improvement of the substance of our laws-a matter far more deserving of a Statesman's attention, than the mechanical drudgery which is pedantically called, "codification." With this object, we have brought under the notice of our legislators, from time to time, the opinions of celebrated men on the subject, of various countries and different ages. We have laboured to remove from the minds of those on whom devolves the "afterwards the head shall be severed from the body of such offender, ❝ and the body, divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as Her Majesty shall think fit; and the offender, if a female, shall be "drawn to the place of execution, and be there hanged by the neck "until she be dead." (p. 280.)

66

In respect to this penalty, the Commissioners also propose the revival of an obsolete statute, by re-enacting it in the following terms :

"Provided that in case Her Majesty shall so think fit, Her Majesty, "after an offender (if a male) shall be adjudged to suffer according "to the provisions of the 1st class of penalties may, by warrant under "Her sign manual, countersigned by one of Her Majesty's Principal "Secretaries of State, declare it to be Her will and pleasure, and may "direct and order that such offender as aforesaid shall not be drawn, "but shall be taken in such manner as in the said warrant shall be "expressed, to the place of execution, and that such offender shall "not be there hanged by the neck, but instead thereof the head shall "be there severed from the body of such offender whilst alive, and in "such warrant may direct and order how and in what manner the "body, head and quarters of such offender shall be disposed of; and "it shall be lawful for the sheriff, or other person or persons to whom "such warrant shall be addressed, and whom it shall concern, to (6 carry the same into execution accordingly." (p. 282.)

There, reader! behold the anticipated march of civilized legislation, in an age when it was supposed that the English Statute-book had ceased to be afresh "blackened or-reddened" with such barbarity!

The second penalty in the graduated scale of the Commissioners, is that of being "hanged by the neck until dead." This punishment the Commissioners desire should be visited on the eight classes of crime above referred to (treason excepted): and they propose, as at present, that the crime of murder should be distinguished from the rest, by burying the offender's body within the precincts of the prison. ED.]

important duty of making laws, the traditionary prejudices, the false notions, and the passions which lead them into error, causing the promulgation of absurd and cruel enactments, where we ought to expect to find only the pure and passionless emanations of legislative wisdom. We have endeavoured to substitute for the vulgar prejudices and current fallacies of penal legislation, those views and maxims which are consistent with Christian morality, and deducible from the eternal principles of justice. In addition to all this, we have illustrated our own opinions by a multitude of facts, gathered from the daily working of the laws-the fresh and living testimony which Courts of Justice themselves supply in favour of the reformation of our penal system; nor have we omitted to give the corroborative evidence of the statistics of crime, collected from the working of the laws in other nations, as well as in our own, to prove that the system which is the soundest in principle-which departs the least from the pure elements of Christian morality-is the most efficacious in practice. On this rock we stand-on the adamantine basis of Christian principle we would build the whole fabric of legislation, which regards the public morals. Where can the Legislature of a Christian people expect to find a firmer foundation? When they have built elsewhere, they have built upon the sand.

All that we have done for the public interests in the promotion of this important branch of reform, has been done gratuitously. The public have had the advantage of it, without its costing them a penny. * * We have done the work of an unpaid Commission towards reforming the criminal laws. Not a Bill has yet been brought into parliament for the mitigation of that severity of which Sir Robert PEEL speaks, for the last seven years, which we did not previously suggest, and of which we did not prove the necessity by facts and arguments, incapable of being gainsaid or controverted. The soundness of our views in all those instances, has been abundantly confirmed by the testimony of experience.

Why is it necessary to speak of these things? Why are we thus obliged to advert to the part which we have taken on this question, and which, if it were not for the absence of indivi

duality in newspaper-writing, might sound like egotism? The reason is, that when we are about to recommend a much larger share of reform in the criminal laws than has yet been carried into effect, it becomes necessary to remind the public of what we have done without the cost of a Commission, as the ground of confidence in our advice as to what still remains to be performed. This becomes the more necessary when a Statesman like Sir Robert PEEL speaks of the reform of the criminal laws as if it were already finished, though not yet half done. How can we shake the authority of his opinion, except by appealing to the experience which the public have already had of the correctness of our own?

**

*

Let us give Sir Robert PEEL credit for what he did in making improvements in the law, at a time when no pressure from without was driving him in that direction. But Sir R. PEEL'S improvements were almost entirely confined to the consolidation and arrangement of certain criminal statutes, and the pruning away certain technical incumbrances and impediments to justice. Where there was a mitigation of the severity of the law, it was done with that extreme degree of caution from which little practical benefit followed, as for instance, in the case of raising the price of human life-from forty shillings to five pounds—for stealing in the dwelling-house. What was the consequence? Juries-who used to reduce the value of property so stolen, whatever might be the amount, to thirty-nine shillings in favour of life-rendered capital indictments under the new statute nugatory, by reducing the property to a value below five pounds; and this the Jury did in one case, where the property stolen was clearly proved to have amounted to 1,000 pounds. Such was the frightful state of conflict in which the feelings and the oaths of Jurymen were placed—such the evasions-the "pious frauds," to save the life of a fellow-creature from the grasp of the homicidal law.

It might have done great mischief to have mistaken an improvement of this law, which went rather to its outward form and external character, for a reform in the proper sense of the word-a reform touching its spirit and substance. The Forgery Bill of Sir Robert PEEL, which we opposed, was of the former

character; the Forgery Bill of Lord DENMAN, which we supported, was of the latter.

*

Legislators have now safer data to go upon, in mitigating the severity of the criminal law, than Sir Robert PEEL had when he took it in hand. They have the experience arising from the beneficial consequences of ameliorating the law, in those cases in which the capital penalty has been removed; and in which, from the greater facility of conviction, crime has diminished. In the second report of the Commissioners on Criminal Law, to which we have alluded, there is some unanswerable reasoning to show that crimes of different degrees of moral guilt, ought not to be confounded in punishment. We believe the public mind is pretty well made up to this at present-that if the punishment of death be retained for any crime, it should be for murder alone; but the Criminal-Law Commissioners, in opposition to their own reasoning, have come to the conclusion of recommending that no less than eight heads of crime be retained, to which capital punishments shall not only be applicable, but in regard to which that punishment shall be, if possible,† invariably executed! * * *

Regicidal Crimes in France unrepressed by the Guillotine.-March 4, 1837.

EVER since the assassin Fieschi and his two last victims, Pepin and Morey, perished by the guillotine, the life of Louis PHILIP has been repeatedly aimed at by regicides actuated by a morbid appetite for a horrible distinction. Alibaud, undoubtedly a monomaniast, found a dreadful attraction in the crime of Fieschi, and the éclat with which it was punished. It is true, he did not, like that consummate ruffian, doom to destruction a crowd of innocent lives in order to reach the great object of his vengeance. But as to the act of regicide, Alibaud envied the fame, and rushed on the fate, of Fieschi. The manner in which he conducted himself during his trial,

[ See Note at p. 211, and their Second Report, (1836,) p. 33.-ED.]