times, there is reason to believe that the laws were very rigidly executed. The materials, indeed, from which we can form any judgment on this subject, are extremely scanty; for in this, as in other countries, historians, occupied with recording the actions of princes, the events of wars, and the negotiations of treaties, have seldom deigned to notice those facts from which can be best collected the state of morals of the people, and the degree of happiness which a nation has at any particular period enjoyed. Sir John Fortescue, the chief justice, and afterwards the chancellor of Henry VI., in a very curious tract on absolute and limited monarchy, in which he draws a comparison between England and France, says, that at that time more persons were executed in England for robberies in one year than in all France in seven. In the long and sanguinary reign of Henry VIII. it is stated by Hollinshed that 72,000 persons died by the hands of the executioner, which is at the rate of 2,000 in every year. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, there appears to have been a great relaxation of the penal laws, but not on the part of the crown; and Sir Nicholas Bacon, the lord keeper, in an earnest complaint which he makes to parliament on the subject, says,

"it remains to see in whose default this is;" and he adds, "certain it is, that her Majesty "leaveth nothing undone meet for her to do for "the execution of laws;"* and it is related, that in the course of her reign 400 persons were upon an average executed in a year.

These statements, however, it must be admitted, are extremely vague and uncertain, and it is not till about the middle of the last century that we have any accurate information which can enable us to compare the number capitally convicted with the number executed. Sir Stephen Janssen, who was chamberlain of London, preserved tables of the convicts at the Old Bailey and of the executions. These tables have been published by Mr. Howard, and they extend from 1749 to 1772. From them it appears, that in 1749 the whole number convicted capitally in London and Middlesex was 61, and the number executed 44, being above two-thirds. In 1750 there were convicted 84, and executed 56; exactly two-thirds. In 1751, convicted 85, executed 63; about three-fourths. In the seven years which elapsed, from 1749 to 1756 inclu

* D'Ewes's Journ. 234.

siye, there were convicted 428, executed 306: rather less than three-fourths. From 1756 to

1764, of 236 convicted, 139 were executed;. being much more than half. From 1764 to 1772, 457 were convicted, and of these 233 were executed; a little more than half. From this period to 1802 there has not been published any accurate statement on this subject. But from 1802 to 1808 inclusive, there have been printed, under the direction of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, regular tables of the number of persons convicted capitally; and of those on whom the law has been executed; and from these we find, that in London and Middlesex, the numbers are as follows:

It appears, therefore, that at the commence. ment of the present reign, the number of convicts executed exceeded the number of those who were pardoned; but that at the present time, the number pardoned very far exceeds the number of those who are executed. This lenity. I am very far from censuring; on the contrary, I applaud the wisdom as well as the humanity of it. If the law were unremittingly executed, the evil would be still greater, and many more offenders would escape with full impunity: much fewer persons would be found to prosecute, witnesses would more frequently withhold the truth which they are sworn to speak, and juries would oftener in violation of their oaths acquit those who were manifestly guilty. But a stronger proof can hardly be required than this comparison affords, that the present method of administering the law is not, as has been by some imagined, a system maturely formed and regularly established, but that it is a practice which has gradually prevailed, as the laws have become less adapted to the state of society in which we live.

There is no instance in which this alteration in the mode of administering the law has been

more remarkable, than in those of privately stealing in a shop or stable, goods of the value of five shillings, which is made punishable with death by the statute of 10 and 11 William III., and of stealing in a dwelling-house property of the value of forty shillings, for which the same punishment is appointed by the statute of 12 Ann, and which statutes it is now proposed to repeal. The exact numbers cannot, from any thing that has hitherto been published, be correctly ascertained; but from Sir Stephen Janssen's tables it appears, that after laying out of the calculation the numbers convicted of murder, burglary, highway robbery, forgery, coining, returning from transportation, and fraudulent bankruptcies, there remains convicted at the Old Bailey of shop-lifting and other offences of the same nature, in the period from 1749 to 1771, 240 persons, and of those no less than 109 were executed.

What has been the number of persons convicted of those offences within the last seven

years does not appear; but from the tables published under the authority of the Secretary of State, we find that within that period there were committed to Newgate for trial, charged