Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE following Observations contain the substance of a Speech delivered in the House of Commons on the 9th Feb. 1810, on moving for leave to bring in bills to repeal the Acts of 10 and 11 Will. III. 12 Ann, and 24 Geo. II., which make the crimes of stealing privately in a shop, goods of the value of five shillings; or in a dwelling-house, or on board a vessel in a navigable river, property of the value of forty shillings, capital felonies. Some arguments are added, which on that occasion were suppressed, that the patience of the House might not be put to too severe a trial. The attempt to refute Dr. Paley in particu

B

ii

ADVERTISEMENT.

lar, is here considerably enlarged. The arrangement of these observations is certainly very defective; they contain repetitions which might have been avoided, and inaccuracies of style which might have been corrected, if the Author's occupations would have allowed of his rendering this pamphlet as little unworthy of being of fered to the public as he could have wished: but to be useful, it was necessary that this publication should appear before the fate of the bills, which are now depending in parliament, was decided; and his only object in publishing it is, that it may be useful.

OBSERVATIONS, &c.

THERE is probably no other country in the world in which so many and so great a variety of human actions are punishable with loss of life as in England. These sanguinary statutes, however, are not carried into execution. For some time past the sentence of death has not been executed on more than a sixth part of all the persons on whom it has been pronounced, even taking into the calculation crimes the most atrocious and the most dangerous to society, murders, rapes, burning of houses, coining, forgeries, and attempts to commit murder. If we exclude these from our consideration, we shall find that the proportion which the num. ber executed bears to those convicted is, per

B

haps, as one to twenty: and if we proceed still further, and, laying out of the account burglaries, highway robberies, horse-stealing, sheepstealing, and returning from transportation, confine our observations to those larcenies, unaccompanied with any circumstance of aggravation, for which a capital punishment is appointed by law, such as stealing privately in shops, and stealing in dwelling-houses and on board ships, property of the value mentioned in the statutes, we shall find the proportion of those executed reduced very far indeed below that even of one to twenty.

This mode of administering justice is supposed by some persons to be a regular, matured, and well-digested system. They imagine, that the state of things which we see existing, is exactly that which was originally intended; that laws have been enacted which were never meant to be regularly enforced, but were to stand as objects of terror in our statute-book, and to be called into action only occasionally, and under extraordinary circumstances, at the discretion of the judges. Such being supposed to be our criminal system, it is not surprising that there should have been found ingenious men to defend

and to applaud it. Nothing, however, can be more erroneous than this notion. Whether the practice which now prevails be right or wrong, whether beneficial or injurious to the community, it is certain that it is the effect not of design, but of that change which has slowly taken place in the manners and character of the nation, which are now so repugnant to the spirit of these laws, that it has become impossible to carry them into execution.

There probably never was a law made in this country which the legislature that passed it did not intend should be strictly enforced. Even the Act of Queen Elizabeth, which made it a capital offence for any person above the age of fourteen to be found associating for a month with persons calling themselves Egyptians, the most barbarous statute, perhaps, that ever dis graced our criminal code, was executed down to the reign of King Charles the first, and Lord Hale mentions 13 persons having in his time been executed upon it at one assizes. It is only in modern times that this relaxation of the law has taken place, and only in the course of the present reign that it has taken place to a con-* siderable degree. If we look back to remote

« AnteriorContinuar »