254 Capital Offences Multiplied virtue and honest dealing. There is no denying that crimes But newspapers were just of violence were very numerous. securing a wide circulation, and it is most probable that "the popular outcry about the increase of crime was to a "" I When we consider large extent the work of news writers.' the era of peace introduced by the bloodless revolution of 1688, the popular crusade against vice which immediately succeeded it, the enlarging business interests of the nation, the increase of wealth and of quiet happiness in country homes, is it not most probable that people placed a higher value than formerly on the security of life and property, and were more alarmed and incensed by acts of criminal violence at a time when newspapers were bringing the frequency of such misdeeds more glaringly before their eyes? The result would naturally, almost inevitably, be a demand for increased severity of penal laws and a firm enforcement of their penalties, and this is what we find. The English were resolved these actions should be serious crimes in fact as well as on the paper of the statute books. Accordingly, after some experience in the blessings of peace and security came the severer punishment of peace-breakers. The new internal peace was safeguarded by the creation of a multitude of felonies punished with death without benefit of clergy. "From the Restoration to the death of George III-a period of 160 years-no less than 187 capital offences were added to the criminal code," and between 1760 and 1810 sixty-three statutes decreed new capital crimes. The death penalty was inflicted for even the most petty offences, as for example, stealing in a shop to the value of five shillings, stealing from a dwelling house, or on shipboard to forty shillings. As Mr. Burke sarcastically observed: "If a country gentleman can obtain no other favor from government, he is sure to be accommodated with a new felony ' May, ii, 552. 'Traill, v, 351. 2 without benefit of clergy." Paley justified this extreme severity to all grades of criminals by "the necessity of preventing the repetition of the offence." In 1798, offences committed on the high seas were for the first time declared equally criminal with the same acts on shore. For years these terrible statutes were very largely enforced. Men were hanged at Tyburn, every Monday, by the dozen and the score, and many thousands were transported to the colonies in America and Australia, in commutation of the death penalty. Between 1787 and 1857, no less than 108,715 criminals were thus shipped off to Australia. This was the ordinary punishment for felons, under sentence of death, but the Capital Punishments Society reported, in 1845, that more than 1400 people had suffered death between 1810 and 1845, for crimes since then no longer capital; 3 and this was long after the revolt against such cruel punishments was under full headway. Official Accounts and Papers, Vol. 22, 1822, give the number of convicts sent out of the United Kingdom from January, 1816, to January, 1822, as 16,373. The numbers by years are as follows: 1816. 1441 1818. 1819, 1820. 1821. 1822. 1817. The Statistics of Prisons in the same volume bear witness to the increased criminality and increased social pressure against evil-doers, during the early years of the nineteenth century. It gives "an account of the number of persons committed to the different prisons in England and Wales for trial at the assizes and sessions held for the several counties, cities, towns and liberties therein." Signed "H. Hobhouse, Whitehall, 20th May, 1822." 'See Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy, book vi, chap, ix. Quoted in May, ii, 554. 'Pike, ii. * Report of 1845. 256 Crimes against the Person Year........ 1811 1812. 1813. 1814. 1815. 1816. 1817. 1818. 1819. 1820. 1821. No. of persons. 5337 6576 7164 6390 7818 9091 13932) 13567 14254 13710 13115 I Crimes Against the Person. The extraordinary lenity shown by the English for even the worst and grossest offences against the person continued till the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Coventry Act had made it felony to cut with intent to disfigure. In 1722, the Black Act, 9 Geo. I., c. 22, made it felony "wilfully and maliciously to shoot at any person." II Geo. II., c. 22, and a later statute punished wounding "with intent to hinder the export of corn," and wounding seamen in the ordinary discharge of their business. But the first general act on this subject was 43 Geo. III., c. 58, 1803, Lord Ellenborough's act. This statute has 79 sections and "is as elaborate and complete as the early law was crude and imperfect." The death penalty was decreed against all desperate assaults upon the person, including worst attempts to commit murder. Hitherto such attempts were not regarded as serious crimes. At most they could be punished only as misdemeanors at common law, with pillory, fine and brief imprisonment. 9 Geo. IV., c. 31, § II, added attempts to drown, suffocate or strangle, to the capital felonies punished under the act of 1803. And it was again greatly extended by 24 and 25 Vic., c. 100, 1861, which is the law now in force. By 7 Will., 4 and 1 Vic., c. 85, the death penalty was restricted to attempts to murder by poisoning, stabbing, cutting or wounding with that intent, and in 1861 these also were made non-capital crimes. Evidently, in this peaceful nineteenth century, England has been very earnestly engaged in turning injuries to the person into serious crimes. Malicious Injuries to Property. The history of malicious injuries to property shows how great a number of actions 1 Stephen, iii, 113. Ibid., iii, 114 and 116. have been made criminal since the thirteenth century, as particular forms of mischief became noticeably harmful to society. But one offence of this kind was known to the common law, arson ("bernet"). Special statutes have been passed from time to time through the centuries, making other malicious injuries criminal. The first such was the Statute of Westminster, 13 Edw. I., Stat. 1, c. 46, and relates to the throwing down of enclosures. Certain injuries to trees and a few other things were punished by statutes in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Charles II., and the wilful destruction of ships was declared criminal by 22 and 23 Chas. II., c. 11, § 12, and 1 Anne Stat., 2, c. 9; but there was exceedingly little legislation of this kind until the reign of George I. The Black Act of 1722, (9 Geo. I., c. 22), punished with death malicious injuries to trees, cattle, fish ponds, hay stacks, etc.-offences much the same as those punished by Henry VIII. with a fine of £10. Many statutes of George II. and George III. decreed death for malicious conduct, hitherto unpunished. Even the cutting of hop-binds growing on poles in a hop plantation was thus punished, during the eighteenth century. 7 and 8 Geo. IV., c. 27, repealed and consolidated a very large number of these special statutes, and was re-enacted by 24 and 25 Vic., c. 97, the law now in force. The most important new crimes of this class added during the nineteenth century, come under the head of malicious injuries to railways, telegraph and telephone lines Punishments have become much less severe, and the death penalty has been entirely abolished. Piracy was not a crime at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for it was not punished to any extent, and successful pirates were greatly admired by the lower classes. See 37 Hen. VIII., c. 6. See 3 Statutes of Geo I.; 5 Statutes of Geo II; II Statutes of Geo. III. 258 Reaction against Severe Laws Pirates and privateersmen were much confused in the public mind. Many prominent nobles united in a business venture, fitting out the pirate Kidd to catch other pirates; instead of which work he preferred to rob merchantmen.' Wrecking was made a capital offence by 26 Geo. II., c. 19, and piracy was at last extinguished as a profession and, with wrecking, became punished as a crime, by the close of the eighteenth century." The terrible severity of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century laws doubtless freed England from a large amount of very undesirable criminal stock, but it made the land a human shambles, and wonted the people to thoughts and acts of violence and bloodshedding, thus fostering the very lawlessness which the punishments were intended to repress. Hanging seemed to many men an honorable death to die; the march to the gibbet was often a triumphal procession, and the weekly executions a free theatrical entertainment. Reaction came, for the wholesale executions and banishments did not seem to lessen crime. A more humane spirit was growing up within the nation, and it began to seem an awful thing to punish petty larceny with death. This spirit is plainly evident in the decreasing willingness to inflict the death penalty in the eighteenth century, and much more noticeably in the nineteenth. The proportion of capital convictions to executions in the home circuit, which included the counties of Hertz, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Surrey, from 1689 to 1814, were as follows: 3 * See evidence presented to the select committee for the investigation of capital punishment, 1819. Selections in Annual Register, 1819-20, p. 338. The figures from 1718 to 1755 were not given. |