tition; Mr. Tierney expressed himself dissatisfied, and without authority from the nobla family of Berkeley for so doing, declared his intention of moving for the rejection of the petition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer conceived, that all the House could desire, was, that the party petitioning should make good the allegations. The assurance of his learned friend, therefore, in his opinion was sufficient. Mr. Rose regretted that the question should have come before the House, but being before the House, his opinion was, that it was cognizable under the Gren ville act. with propriety be received. Gentlemen, that it would be necessary to apply for he allowed, ought to make no difficulty the Speaker's warrant, to enforce the atin presenting petitions; but if petitioners tendance of witnesses to prove the docugave their petitions into the hands of mem- mentary evidence referred to in the pebers without enabling them to take any steps upon them, they could not complain if such petitions were rejected. This observation applied very strongly to this case, where the noble lord, for so he would still call him, notwithstanding these unsupported allegations (Hear, hear!)had acted upon the assertion of his father, to which he was bound to pay every possible deference. The noble lord had been introduced to society as the heir apparent of his father, and had been received by his sovereign as such. Under such circumstances, he could not have resorted to his qualification without a stain upon himself and his family; he could not have acted otherwise than he had done. There was nothing personal attributed to the noble lord. This petition had been presented without any instructions to the hon. member how to act upon it, as if it had no other object than to excite domestic rivalship and animosity; as if it had been the design to have it laid on the table to be taken up at any distance of time, no one undertaking at present to substantiate the facts contained in it. Would the House then suffer this petition to lie on its table, to be held out in terrorem, and for no other purpose than exciting uneasiness, and producing animosity in breasts where the fondest affection existed?-If the House were to receive this petition it would be hereafter in the power of malignity to poison conjugal happiness, and to plant thorns in the hearts of the innocent, by making the proceedings of this House a vehicle to publish its libels. The House must see the mischief of this measure; it was a case without example; respecting it no party spirit could exist, and he trusted for its rejec tion in the generous feelings of the right hon. gent. opposite.. Mr. Kenrick said, that the petition was framed with considerable attention to its not being obnoxious. If no other member suggested it, he felt it to be his duty, to move that the petition should be referred to a committee of privileges. Mr. Tierney wished to know from the learned gent. whether he would undertake that the petitioners (supposing the House received their petition) would proceed. Mr. Kenrick would give no pledge. He had learnt from the counsel employed, Sir J. Anstruther was of the contrary opinion. He thought before the petition was laid on the table, the House ought to be informed whether any hon. member was prepared to prove the allegation, viz. that the noble lord is not the legitimate son of earl Berkeley. If not, then he should object to it being laid on the table. Mr. Fuller thought the electors should have raised the objection at the election. It was competent, however, for them to object to the qualification, and he should be for doing justice. Mr. Bathurst wished the hon. gent. who presented the petition, had asked the petitioners whether they were or not prepared to prove their case. He regretted the extreme cruelty and scandal which must necessarily follow the agitation of the subject; but on the whole he thought it impossible for the House to refuse going into the inquiry. Mr. C. W. Wynn should have been against receiving the petition, but for the state ment of the learned gent. (Mr. Kenrick), that counsel and witnesses were ready to attend. He thought the business, however, highly cruel, and that the petition could answer no good purpose. The Speaker said, if the House wished to dispose of the petition as speedily as possible they would send it at once to a committee. If they were to order it to lie on the table that would have the effect of disposing of it for that day. The Solicitor General could not see any possible ground for refusing the petition. It was in terms of law, and its prayer and language were respectful. If it was to be gone into and prosecuted, were there not questions which they were to inquire into before-hand? If, in the result, it should not be supported by proof, that was an insult which it would behove the House to punish, and not to suffer the petitioners to escape its just vengeance. He concluded by moving that the petition be referred to a committee of privileges. circum that their choice had been Mr. Canning said, he had never met with a question in which he had experienced more difficulty in making up his mind. He might indeed, now feel his difficulties revived, from perceiving that his hon. and learned friend who spoke last, and the hon. gent. opposite who spoke before him (Mr. Wynn), differed from him in opinion. The question, however, seemed to him, with all deference, to be Were they, from respect to the petitioners, to enter into a proceeding which they knew could not in the result be satisfactory? If the investigation which might take place should terminate favourably to the claims of the noble lord, against whom the application was made, their decision in his favour could be to him of no service. If, on the contrary, they should be of opinion against him, such a declaration would go to prejudice his rights. Was that House to proceed to the trial of a question over which they had no jurisdiction, and which must afterwards come before a competent tribunal? And were they to try in the most unsatisfactory manner, what must be again satisfactorily and legally investigated? There might be a necessity for this, if it could be alledged that the other party's rights would be injured if the House did not interfere; but here there was no such pretence. The petitioners said they were ready to make out their case; but even if they did make out all they alledged, it would not, to his mind, be conclusive, but would only go to raise strong inferences, which there might be facts sufficiently strong to do away. But after all, of what did they complain? That the noble lord was seated instead of the person of their choice? No-that he was not a proper person to represent the County No-but that an individual held a seat in that House under the name by which they had always known him. If they had had doubts on their minds they might have brought the question to trial in a fair way. What, however, was the question now? Not one relating to the electors, but to the person who was to si in that House. They complained not The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, if this was a question of discretion he should agree with his right hon. friend. So much the contrary, however, this was a petition under a statute, and he could not see on what ground the House could refuse to act on it. The petitioners were freeholders who complained of the sitting member being disqualified, and this was a case which they were entitled to bring before the House. He thought the case must go to a committee of privileges to ascertain the fact. As to this being a question of party feeling against the noble lord, it was impossible to conceive so. All feeling must operate the other way. Upon a division, the numbers were, For the motion 46; Against it 91; Majority 45. The petition was consequently rejected. [NAVAL ARSENAL at Northfleet.] Mr. Sharp complained that the Fifteenth Re port of the commissioners of naval revision had not been laid before the House. The Report to which he alluded set forth the necessity of establishing a new Naval Arsenal at Northfleet. It appeared that our harbours at Portsmouth and Plymouth were on the decline, having less depth of water than formerly, so that ships coming in to be repaired, were obliged to have their guns and stores taken out before they could enter. Similar inconveniencies were experienced at Deptford and at Woolwich, so that ships of the line were obliged to drop down to Long Reach, or Northfleet to be fitted out for sea. These circumstances rendered the establishment of a new Naval Ar-enal necessary. The immense expences in urred in consequence of the evils he had described were sufficient to answer any objection that might be made to the expence at tending the establishment of a new Naval Arsenal, however, great it might be. In the event of a peace, such an establishment would be necessary, as room would be wanting to lay up 130 sail of the line, and upwards of 400 other vessels of war. This was proposed in the Report, as a remedy for the evils complained of, and Northfleet was named as having a greater depth of water than either of our docks at Portsmouth, at Plymouth, at Deptford, or at Woolwich. He thought the Report ought to be laid upon their table, and concluded by moving "An humble Address to his Majesty, praying that he would be graciously pleased to direct that the Fifteenth Report of the commissioners of naval revision, and the Report sent in to the board of admiralty, dated Oct. 18, 1807, and signed J. Rennie and J. Whidby, relating to mooring chains, be laid before that House." and experienced judges concurred. The idea of manufacturing sail cloth in the yards, he deemed to be totally misconceived. He never asserted that there should be no Arsenal at Northfleet, he merely deemed strict inquiry necessary into the extent of such a work. Mr. R. Dundas wished the hon. gent. would not at present press his motion. He agreed with his several statements. The question has been already before the privy council, but in consequence of the great expence necessary, no decision had been come to. Mr. W. Smith stated, that almost every noble lord who has been at the head of the admiralty, had left a memorandum of the importance of this measure. It should not be postponed, inasmuch as it concerned the independence of the kingdom. Mr. Croker observed, that the delay did not arise from any unwillingness, but from its great importance, and the wish to avoid bringing it out piece-meal. The question was then put, and negatived. Mr. Yorke observed that the present naval exertions had out-grown all former systems; and it would, therefore, be proper to make some new arrangement to meet the inconvenience thence arising. It was, however, the first duty of government to look well into all the circum- [PENITENTIARY HOUSES.] Sir Samuel stances and bearings of the case, before Romilly, in rising to make his promised they expended 10,000,000l. in forming the motion, touching the acts of the 19th and proposed new Arsenal at Northfleet. The the 34th of the King, relative to the PeHouse could not at present enter fully into nitentiary Houses, said, he should not go the question with prudence, but he hoped over the grounds at any great length, upon government, at a period not very distant, which he thought this measure ought to be would be able to grant the information re-adopted, and which he had fully stated not quired, or give satisfactory reasons for withholding it. He should oppose the motion, as the Report could not be produced at present without much inconvenience to the public service. Mr. Wilberforce did not think it at all unsafe for the Report to lie on the table. If the measure was thought of some years ago, it was still more necessary from the present aspect of affairs to put it into effect. With respect to the calculation, lord Earham's authority was sufficient. He did not approve of the production of the papers, and hoped that ere long something effectual would be adopted. It is a plan long ago, when he made the motion which Mr. Rose approved of the authorities cited by the hon. gent., to which he wished to add that of lord Vincent, who thought there was an absolute necessity of fortifications and armaments eastward of Spithead. The dock-yards, instead of declining, were in a constant state of im-useful trades, to accustom them to habits provement. In the harbour of Portsmouth there was no want of deep water. He alluded to his publication on the depth of the Thames, in which the most skilled VOL. XVII. of industry, to give them religious instruc tion, and to provide them with a recommendation to the world, and the means of obtaining an honest livelihood Y tained, and the danger and contagion of whose society and manners and example cannot be doubtful. Such is the general state of the prisons of this country, with a very few exceptions highly honourable to the counties in which they are to be found. The most remarkable of these are the prisons of Gloucestershire, under the care of sir George Paul, and the house of correction at Southwell, in Nottinghamshire. Amongst the prisons pre-eminent for the badness of their police and their regulations, I am sorry to be obliged to mention those of the metropolis. The pri son of Newgate particularly seems to combine every defect of which a place of confinement is capable; and at the same time that we have erected a national monument to Mr. Howard, as a reward for his exertions to reform our prisons, the city of London leave, close to the statue we have raised, this gaol, as a monument of our disgrace and our inhumanity, and in which not one of the regulations which Howard recommended has been observed. after the expiration of the term of their | punishment. In the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone, it was a system which united in itself so many advantages, and held out so flattering a prospect of success, that he did not hesitate to declare that, "if properly executed, there was reason to hope that such a reformation might be effected in the lower classes of mankind, and such a gradual scale of punishment be affixed to all gradations of guilt, as might in time supersede the necessity of capital punishments, except for very atrocious crimes." (Com. 11 edit. vol. iv. p. 371.) That plan, however, has remained on the statute book for upwards of 30 years, without any effectual step having been taken to carry it into execution. In the mean time the want of it has been severely felt, and all have confessed that the inconvenience and inefficacy of other punishments have rendered but too sensible the impolitic and injurious tendency of the present system. There are, indeed, but three species of punishment which by the law of this country can be afflicted for crimes above the description of misdemeanors, and which are yet not punishable with death-that of imprisonment in gaols or houses of correction; imprisonment on board the hulks; or transportation. With respect to imprisonment it has been found, that in general persons who have been confined in common gaols return to society much worse than when they were first withdrawn from it; that men who were imprisoned for their first offence, became in a short space of time hardened and desperate, and qualified to commit the most dangerous crimes; that they are matured in villainy, with a degree of rapidity which would be thought hardly possible in so short a period. To remedy this evil, expedients have been devised, but none have been executed. The prisons of this country yet remain a reproach to it. No one step has been taken to adopt a plan, by which the different classes and species of offenders might be separated from each other. Offenders of the very worst description are indiscriminately mingled with those whose first offence (and that, perhaps, a very slight one) had brought them into a situation, from which with a little care they might be reclaimed. Persons who have been committed on suspicion of an offence, whose guilt or innocence is yet matter of uncertainty, are compelled to associate with those whose crimes have been ascer Imprisonment on board the hulks is still more pernicious, and productive of still greater evils, even than imprisonment in our common gaols. It seems not to be the duty of any responsible person to determine what description of offenders shall be sent on board these vessels. Convicts from remote parts of the country, and those who have long infested the streets of London; boys for their first offences, and long practised robbers and adepts in every species of crimes; those who are not intended to be removed to any other place of punishment, and such as are waiting only for an opportunity to transport them to Botany Bay, are all confounded together, and, in the intervals of their severe labours, encourage and instruct each other in crimes, and in the most odious vices. Mr. Howard has stated as the result of much observation and inquiry, that of the persons confined on board the hulks, those who came from the country generally died, in consequence of their confinement, and of the horror they felt at the examples and the scenes exhibited to them; and that those who came from great manufacturing towns generally became in a short time the most daring and dangerous of offenders. When this subject was last before the House the secretary of state told us, that lately a great reform had been effected on board the hulks, and that they were no longer liable to the objections formerly made to them; and this happy change he ascribed to the gentlemen under whose superintendence they are placed. I am sorry to say, that that representation does not agree with the accounts which I have received. I have no doubt that the reports which have been made to that gentleman by the persons he employs are perfectly conformable to the statements which he has made to the secretary of state; but has that gentleman, though I understand that he inspects the hulks himself, been at Portsmouth more than once within the last year? and if he has, is it or is it not true, that although the most vicious and depraved habits and examples prevail there, there are at this moment no less than 14 or 15 boys to be found amongst the prisoners? The truth is, that no attention will ever be able to correct the defects of this species of punishment. The mischief, as is truly stated by the Committee of which you were the chairman, in their report of 1797, is not so much in the mode of conducting the establishment, as in the establishment itself. The vices of it are inseparable from the system. led to the revolution which has lately taken place there, an attorney, who here stood in the pillory, and was afterwards transported, a man who here would have been an outcast from all society, was confidentially advised with by those in authority, and enjoyed something very like the influence of an attorney-general, because he was well acquainted with legal forms. To judge of the effects which are produced in the convicts in the way of refor mation, one has but to read the history of the colony which has been published by Mr. Collins, a writer who is above all suspicion of exaggerating the evils he relates, for, in spite of the facts which in every page of his book pronounce the condemnation of the whole system, he is uni formly its panegyrist. The history which he has written is little more than a disgusting narrative of atrocious crimes and most severe and cruel punishments. It is indeed a subject of very melancholy, and to this House of very reproachful reflec tion, that such an experiment in criminal jurisprudence and colonial policy as that of transportation to New South Wales should have been tried, and we should have suffered now 24 years to elapse without examining or even inquiring into its success or its failure. An experiment more unpromising or bolder than that of founding a colony, which was to consist altogether of thieves and convicts, of the very refuse of society, of men habituated to idleness, and having no motive for wishing success to the colony they were founding, never was tried in any former age or by any other nation. When we formerly transported convicts to North America, they found themselves immediately on their arrival in a society, where habits of industry and regularity prevailed, and where the vices or crimes of an individual marked him out as an object of infamy or of punishment; but in the infancy of the colony in New South Wales, guilt and vice were the characterestics of the whole With respect to the punishment of transportation to New South Wales, I have so lately troubled the House, and at so much length upon it, that I should be inexcusable in trespassing long upon their patience now. In whatever light we consider it, as calculated to prevent crimes, whether by the terror which the example should inpire, or by the reformation of the individual punished, we shall find it extremely innefficacious. As an example, the effect of the punishment is removed to a distance from those on whom it is to operate. It is involved in the greatest uncertainty, and is considered very differently according to the sanguine or desponding disposition of those who reflect on it, or according to the more accurate or eroneous accounts of the colony which may happen to have reached them. The severity, indeed, or lenity of the punishment, depends not on the degree of guilt of the of-nation. It was to be a people of thieves and fender, but of his talents, and acquirements and qualifications, for the new state of things into which he is transported. Possessed of that knowledge and skill which happens here to be most in request, it matters little what has been his offence, he may chance soon to find himself relieved from all restraint, and in a situation which he never could have hoped to gain in his own country. I have been informed that in the transactions which immediately outlaws, under the controul of their military guards. Thieves and their keepersprisoners and their jailors-these were to be the whole population. If such a project ever could have been successful, at least the persons transported should have been only those who were sentenced to that punishment for life, and not men who, being sentenced for a few years only, would soon have a right by law to quit the colony. The greatest |