wish for their continuance, to contend that they are not intended to be carried into effect, but are only meant to furnish the judicial authorities with sufficient power to include every description of crime, and, at the same time to allow such an exercise of discretion, as may give to a severe law a mild and temperate execution. To such an extreme has this idea been carried, that a very popular modern writer* has erected upon it a system of legislation, which he denominates the "Law of England," which, as he informs us, "by the number of statutes creating capital offences, sweeps into the net every crime, which under any possible circumstances, may merit the punishment of death; but when the execution of this sentence comes to be deliberated upon, a small proportion of each class are singled out, the general character, or the particular aggravations of whose crimes, render them fit examples of public justice; and by this expedient, few actually suffer death, whilst the dread and danger of it hang over the crimes of many." This attempt to represent as a preconceived and regulated system of legislation, a state of our judicial concerns, which has arisen from the mere impossibility of carrying such ' sanguinary measures into effect, is not less re

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* Dr. Paley.

pugnant to the truth, than it is foreign to the ideas of our ancestors; who, however they might err on the side of severity, were certainly sincere in their hostility against crimes, and intended their enactments should be carried into effect. The fallacy of this statement has been fully shewn by Sir Samuel Romilly,* by whose enlightened efforts and indefatigable exertions, some of the most cruel and obnoxious of these statutes have been repealed.† It is not however by the success that has attended his labours, that we must estimate what is due from the community to this real patriot and distinguished senator. The reforms effected by him, bear indeed a small proportion to the enormous mass of sanguinary enactments which disgrace our statute book; but the maxims of legislation which he has laid down, and the sound principles for which he has contended, apply to the whole system; and will, it may confidently be.

* In his tract entitled "Observations on the Criminal Law of England," as well as in his speeches in parliament.

the

In particular, the 8th Eliz. c. 4. by which larceny from person above the value of 12d. was made felony without benefit of clergy, and the English and Irish statutes which punished the stealing from bleaching grounds with death. In the session of 1812, an act was also passed to repeal the statute of Eliz. which made it a capital offence for soldiers or mariners to wander or beg without a pass.

hoped, eventually produce such alterations as may remove from our judicial code, the imputation of cruelty on the one hand, and prevent the impunity of the criminal on the other.*

In fact it is in this ill-judged lenity, or rather inefficacy of the law, that we discover one great cause of the extraordinary profligacy and depravity of the present day. Offenders of every description, hardened and instructed in wickedness, are acquitted by our courts and liberated from our gaols, to renew their depredations on the community. Such is the inevitable. consequence of enacting a punishment wholly inapplicable to the crime, that the public suffers whilst the criminal escapes. He has indeed been meshed in the great net of the law,

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*May this expectation be accomplished! for, since the above was written, the world has been deprived of the illustrious individual to whom it relates, and can now only avail itself of the lessons which he has left for its improvement! May we not, however, venture to hope, from the sincere sympathy and universal grief which this event has occasioned, that the cause he so warmly espoused, and the sentiments he so forcibly expressed, are deeply felt by the nation at large? And that his loss will, as far as possible, be repaired by an increased determination on their part to promote the great and beneficent objects which he so faithfully pursued? Such a result of his labours may delight his spirit, and add to his happiness in the regions of the blest.

but this net retains scarcely one in a thousand, and he has escaped so often, that he has little fear of encountering another trial. Such is the acknowledged barbarity of our laws, and such the more enlightened and humanized state of the public feeling, that they are no longer compatible with each other. Accordingly we perceive on every hand indications that a further perseverance in our present track will not long be possible. Whilst our institutions continue in their present form, persons injured frequently will not prosecute-witnesses will not attendjuries will not convict, and judges cannot condemn. In the mean time, guilt and rapacity raise their heads with renewed insolence, and

* It was stated in the House of Commons, in the debate on the shop-lifting and canal bills (Feb. 1810) that out of 1872 persons who had, in the course of seven years, been ⚫ committed to Newgate, for stealing in dwelling houses, only one was executed.

+ "At Carnarvon Sessions (1818) J. Jones, a drover, was tried for uttering forged bank-notes, and, notwithstanding thirty-one witnesses established the charge, and Mr. Glover, inspector to the Bank of England, traced thirty-nine notes to have been paid by the prisoner, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Next day, the same prisoner was indicted for having forged notes in his possession, and the jury again returned a verdict of not guilty."-The records of our Courts of Justice abound with similar instances.

brave the ministers of law on the seat of justice. Such a state of things cannot, it is evident, admit of delay. It has been proposed by many excellent men, that attempts should be made to apportion punishments to offences, so that every crime should have its appropriate penalty; but, to say nothing of the acknowledged and numerous difficulties which must attend the completion of such a task, if the public are to wait till the endless diversity of opinion to which this subject would give rise be reconciled, all prospect of redress would be hopeless. Let it not however be imagined, that the public depredator, the hardened criminal, is to be suffered to persist in his guilt. Let his hopes of impunity be dispelled, and his fears be awakened by buildings rising in every county and every city of the kingdom, calculated to repress his enormities, to subdue his obstinacy, to form him to new habits and better dispositions, to render him sensible of his misconduct, and enable him to provide for himself by honest industry:-let the Courts of Justice, instead of dismissing offenders, to commence a new career of crimes, deliver them over to these no less effective than truly benevolent institutions; where, as has already been shewn by ample experience, there is every reason to expect that a great majority may be redeemed from their guilt, and restored to society; or, if this should not be found in

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