must always be expected. Your committee have not attempted a complete enumeration, which much time and considerable deliberation would be required to accomplish. They selected some capital felonies for the continuance of which they cannot anticipate any serious argument, and which seem to them to serve no purpose but that of encumbering and discrediting the Statute book. Various considerations have combined to guide their choice; sometimes mere levity and hurry have raised an insignificant offence, or an almost indifferent act, into a capital crime; in other acts the evil has been manifestly and indeed avowedly temporary, though it unfortunately produced a perma.nent law. Where the punishment of death was evidently unnecessary at the time of its original establishment, and where, if it was originally justified by a temporary danger, or excused by a temporary fear, it has long been acknowledged to be altogether disproportioned to the of fence, your committee conceive themselves warranted in confidently recommending its abolition. But they have also adverted to another consideration; if in addition to the intrinsic evidence of unwarrantable severity in law which arises from the comparison of the act forbidden with the punishment threatened, they find also that the law has scarcely ever been executed since its first enactment, or if it has fallen into disuse as the nation became more humane and generally enlightened, your committee consider themselves as

authorized to recommend its repeal by long experience and by the deliberate judgment of the whole nation. In the application of this latter principle, they have been materially aided by the documents which have been mentioned. Where a penal law has not been carried into effect in Middlesex for more than a century, in the counties round London for sixty years, and in the extensive district which forms the western circuit for fifty, it may be safely concluded that the general opinion has pronounced it to be unfit or unnecessary to continue in force.

It has sometimes been said, that the abolition of penal laws which have fallen into disuse is of little advantage to the community. Your committee consider this opinion as an error. They forbear to enlarge on the striking remark of lord Bacon, that all such laws weaken and disarm the other parts of the criminal system. The frequent occurrence of the unexecuted threat of death in a criminal code, tends to rob that punishment of all its terrors, and to enervate the general authority of the go. vernment and the laws. The multiplication of this threat in the laws of England has brought on them, and on the nation, a character of harshness and cruelty which evidence of a mild administration of them will not entirely remove. Repeal silences the objection. Reasoning founded on lenient exercise of authority, whatever its force may be, is not calculated to efface a general and deep impression. The removal of disused laws is a preliminary operation

z 2

operation which greatly facilitates a just estimate, and (where it is necessary) an effectual reform of those laws which are to remain in activity. Were capital punishments reduced to the comparatively small number of cases in which they are often inflicted, it would become a much simpler operation to form a right judgment of their propriety or necessity. Another consideration of still greater moment presents itself on this part of the subject; penal laws are sometimes called into activity after long disuse, and in cases where their very existence may be unknown to the best informed part of the community; malicious prosecutors set them in motion; a mistaken administration of the law may apply them to purposes for which they were not intended, and which they are calculated more to defeat than to promote: such seems to have been the case of the person who, in the year 1814, at the assizes for Essex, was capitally convicted of the offence of cutting down trees, and who, in spite of earnest applications for mercy from the prosecutor, the committing magistrate and the whole neighbourhood, was executed, apparently because he was believed to be habitually engaged in other offences, for none of which however he had been con

victed or tried.

This case is not quoted as furnishing any charge against the humanity of the judge or of the advisers of the crown; they certainly acted according to the dictates of their judgment: but it is a case where the effect of punishment is sufficiently shown by the

evidence to be the reverse of exemplary, and it is hard to say whether the general disuse of the capital punishment in this offence, or the single instance in which it has been carried into effect, suggests the strongest reasons for its abolition.

The statutes creating capital felonies which the committee have considered under this head, are reducible to two classes; the first relate to acts either so nearly indifferent as to require no penalty, or if injurious, not of such a magnitude as that they may not safely be left punishable as misdemeanors at common law. In these your committee propose the simple repeal; they are as follows:

1.-1 and 2 Phil. and Mary, c. 4. Egyptians remaining within the kingdom one month.

2.-18 Charles 2, c. 3. Notorious thieves in Cumberland and Northumberland.

3.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Being armed and disguised in any forest, park, &c.

4.9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Being armed and disguised in any warren.

5.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Being armed and disguised in any high road, open heath, common down.

or

6.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Unlawfully hunting, killing, or stealing deer.

7.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Robbing warrens, &c.

8.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Stealing or taking any fish out of any river or pond, &c.

9.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Hunting in his Majesty's forests or chases. 10.-9 Geo. 1, c. 22. Break

ing down the head or mound of a fish-pond.

11.-9 Geo. 1, c. 28. Being disguised within the Mint.

12.-12 Geo. 2, c. 29. Injuring of Westminster-bridge, and other bridges by other acts.

The second class consists of those offences which, though in the opinion of your committee never fit to be punished with death, are yet so malignant and dangerous as to require the highest punishments except death which are known to our laws. These the committee would make punishable either by transportation or imprisonment with hard labour, allowing considerable scope to the discretion of the judges respecting the term for which either punishment is to endure.

1.-31 Eliz. c. 9. Taking away any maid, widow, or wife,

11.-27 Geo. 2, c. 15. Sending threatening letters.

12.-27 Geo. 2, c. 19. Destroying bank, &c. Bedford Level.

13.-3 Geo. 3, c. 16. Personating out-pensioners of Greenwich-hospital.

14.-22 Geo. 3, c. 40. Maliciously cutting serges.

15.-24 Geo. 3, c. 47. Harbouring offenders against that (Revenue) act, when returned from transportation.

In the more disputable questions, which relate to offences of more frequent occurrence and more extensive mischief, your committee will limit their present practical conclusions to those cases to which the evidence before them most distinctly refers. They cannot entertain any doubt that the general principles which have been so strikingly verified and corroborated in some particular cases by that evidence, apply with equal force to many others, relating to which they have not had sufficient time to collect the testimony of witnesses. That some offences which the law treats as arson, and more which it punishes as burglary, are are not properly classed with these crimes, and ought not to be punished with death, would probably be rendered apparent by a legislative consolidation of the laws in being respecting arson and burglary. The same result, though in a less degree, might be expected from a similar operation in other important heads of criminal law.

On the three capital felonies of privately stealing in a shop to the amount of five shillings,-of privately stealing in a dwelling

house,

house to the amount of forty shillings; and of privately stealing from vessels in a navigable river to the amount of forty shillings, the House of Commons have pronounced their opinion, by passing bills for reducing the punishment to transportation or imprisonment.

In proposing to revive those bills, your committee feel a singular satisfaction that they are enabled to present to the House so considerable a body of direct evidence in support of opinions which had hitherto chiefly rested on general reasoning, and were often alleged by their opponents to be contradicted by experience. Numerous and respectable witnesses have borne testimony, for themselves and for the classes whom they represent, that a great reluctance prevails to prosecute, to give evidence, and to convict, in the cases of the three last-mentioned offences; and that this reluctance has had the effect of producing impunity to such a degree, that it may be considered as among the temptations to the commission of crimes. Your committee beg leave to direct the attention of the House to the evidence of Sir Archibald Macdonald, on this and other parts of the general subject, in which that venerable person has stated the result of many years' experience in the administration of criminal law. They forbore to desire the opinion of the present judges, out of consideration to the station and duties of these respectable magistrates. It appeared unbecoming and inconvenient that those whose office it is to execute the criminal law should

be called on to give an opinion whether it ought to be altered.

But highly as the committee esteem and respect the judges, it is not from them that the most accurate and satisfactory evidence of the effect of the penal law can reasonably be expected. They only see the exterior of criminal proceedings after they are brought into a court of justice. Of the cases which never appear there, and of the causes which prevent their appearance, they can know nothing. Of the motives which influence the testimony of witnesses, they can form but a hasty and inadequate estimate. Even in the grounds of verdicts they may often be deceived. From any opportunity of observing the influence of punishment upon those classes of men among whom malefactors are most commonly found, the judges are, by their stations and duties, placed at a great distance.

Your committee have sought for evidence on these subjects from those classes of men who are sufferers from larcenies, who must be prosecutors where these larcenies are brought to trial, who are the witnesses by whom such charges must be substantiated, and who are the jurors by whose verdicts only effect can be given to the laws. On this class of persons, where the crimes are most frequent, and where long and extensive experience allows little room for error and none for misrepresentation, or in other words, on the traders of the cities of London and Westminster, your committee have principally relied for information.

information. To the clerks at the offices of magistrates, and to the officers of criminal courts who receive informations and prepare indictments, to experienced magistrates themselves, and to the gaolers and others, who, in the performance of their duties, have constant opportunities of observing the feelings of offenders, the committee have also directed their inquiries; their testimony has been perfectly uniform.

After due consideration of this important question, your committee are of opinion, that forgeries are a class of offences respecting which it is expedient to bring together and methodize the laws now in being. That in the present state of public feeling, a reduction of the punishment in most cases of that crime is become necessary to the execution of the laws, and consequently to the security of property and the protection of commerce; and that the means adopted by the legislature to return to our ancient standard of value, render the reformation of the criminal laws respecting forgeries a matter of very considerable urgency. Private forgeries will, in the opinion of the committee, be sufficiently and most effectually repressed by the punishments of transportation and imprisonment. As long as the smaller notes of the Bank of England shall continue to constitute the principal part of the circulating medium of the kingdom, it may be reasonable to place them on the same footing with the metallic currency: your com

mittee therefore propose, that the forgery of these notes may for the present remain a capital offence; that the uttering of forged Bank notes shall, for the first offence, be transportation or imprisonment; but that on the second conviction the offender shall be deemed to be a common utterer of forged notes, and shall, if the prosecutor shall so desire, be indicted as such, which will render him liable to capital punishment.

Respecting the offence of knowingly possessing forged notes, your committee have no alteration to suggest but what they conceive would be fit in all transportable offences, that a discretion should be vested in the judges to substitute imprisonment with hard labour for transportation, where such a substitution shall seem to them expedient. As the discovery of the actual forgers of Bank notes has been found by experience to be in the highest degree difficult, your committee consider the suggestion of the commissioners for inquiring into the means of preventing forgeries, of offering an unusually large reward for the detection of forgeries, as worthy of serious consideration: to such rewards in general, the committee feel an insuperable objection. In the case of forgery there are circumstances which considerably weaken the objection. No jury could convict in such a case on the mere evidence of an informer, unsupported by the discovery of those materials, implements and establishments necessary for carrying on the criminal system.

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