claims been satisfied? She has been sacrificed to a frivolous, a doubtful, perhaps an imaginary, speculation of convenience. The most odious of foreign yokes has been imposed upon her by a free state,—by a people whom she never injured,—after she had been mocked by the re-appearance of her ancient government, and by all the ensigns and badges of her past glory. And after all this, she has been told to be grateful for the interest which the Government of England has taken in her fate. By this confiscation of the only Italian territory which was at the disposal of justice, the doors of hope have been barred on Italy for ever. No English general can ever again deceive Italians. Will the House decide that all this is right? That is the question which you have now to decide. To vote with me, it is not necessary to adopt my opinions in their full extent. All who think that the national faith has been brought into question,- all who think that there has been an unprecedented extension, or an ungenerous exercise of the rights of conquest,-are, I humbly conceive, bound to express their disapprobation by their votes. We are on the eve of a new war, perhaps only the first of a long series, in which there must be conquests and cessions, and there may be hard and doubtful exertions of rights in their best state sufficiently odious:- I call upon the House to interpose their counsel for the future in the form of an opinion - regarding the past. I hope that I do not yield to any illusive feelings of national vanity, when I say that this House is qualified to speak the sentiments of mankind, and to convey them with authority to cabinets and thrones. Single among representative assemblies, this House is now in the seventh century of its recorded existence. It appeared with the first dawn of legal government. It exercised the highest powers under the most glorious princes. It survived the change of a religion, and the extinction of a nobility, the fall of Royal Houses, and an age of civil war. Depressed for a moment by the tyrannical power which is the usual growth of civil confusions, it revived with the first glimpse of tranquillity,-gathered strength from the intrepidity of religious reformation, grew with the knowledge, and flourished with the progressive wealth of the people. After having experienced the excesses of the spirit of liberty during the Civil War, and of the spirit of loyalty at the Restoration, it was at length finally esta blished at the glorious era of the Revolution; and although since that immortal event it has experienced little change in its formal constitution, and perhaps no accession of legal power, it has gradually cast its roots deep and wide, blending itself with every branch of the government, and every institution of society, and has, at length, become the grandest example ever seen among men of a solid and durable representation of the people of a mighty empire. SPEECH ON MOVING FOR A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW,* DELIVERED IN the house of cOMMONS, ON THE 2nd March, 1819. MR. SPEAKER, I now rise, in pursuance of the notice which I gave, to bring before the House a motion for the appointment of a Select Committee "to consider of so much of the Criminal Laws as relates to Capital Punishment in Felonies, and to report their observations and opinions thereon to the House." And I should have immediately proceeded to explain the grounds and objects of such a motion, which is almost verbatim the same as a resolution entered on the Journals in the year 1770, when authority was delegated to a committee for the same purpose, I should have proceeded, I say, to state at once why I think such an inquiry necessary, had it not been for some concessions made by the Noble Lord † last night, which tend much to narrow the grounds of difference between us, and to simplify the question before the House. If I considered the only subject of discussion to be that which exists between the Noble Lord and myself, it would be reduced to this narrow compass; —namely, whether the Noble Lord's proposal or mine be the more convenient for the conduct of the same inquiry; but as every member in this House is a party to the question, I must make an This speech marks an epoch in the progress of the reformation of the Criminal Law, inasmuch as the motion with which it concluded, though opposed by Lord Castlereagh with all the force of the Government, under cover of a professed enlargement of its principle, was carried by a majority of nineteen in a House of two hundred and seventy-five members. -ED. † Viscount Castlereagh. — ED. observation or two on the Noble Lord's statements. If I understood him rightly, he confesses that the growth of crime, and the state of the Criminal Law in this country, call for investigation, and proposes that these subjects shall be investigated by a Select Committee;-this I also admit to be the most expedient course. He expressly asserts also his disposition to make the inquiry as extensive as I wish it to be. As far, therefore, as he is concerned, I am relieved from the necessity of proving that an inquiry is necessary, that the appointment of a Select Committee is the proper course of proceeding in it, and that such inquiry ought to be extensive. I am thus brought to the narrower question, Whether the committee of the Noble Lord, or that which I propose, be the more convenient instrument for conducting an inquiry into the special subject to which my motion refers? I shall endeavour briefly to show, that the mode of proceeding proposed by him, although embracing another and very fit subject of inquiry, must be considered as precluding an inquiry into that part of the Criminal Law which forms the subject of my motion, for but must not the meaning, in any fair and liberal construction, be taken to be that the committee is to consider the reformation and safe custody of those offenders of whom imprisonment forms the whole or the greatest part of the punishment? It would be absurd to suppose that the question of Capital Punishment should be made an inferior branch of the secondary question of im Criminal Law should skulk into the committee under the cover of one vague and equivocal word. On these grounds, Sir, I have a right to say that there is no comparison as to the convenience or the efficacy of the two modes of proceeding. or three gaols occupied a committee during a whole session. My Honourable Friend*, a magistrate of the city, has stated that an inquiry into the state of the prisons of the metropolis, occupied during a whole session the assiduous committee over which he presided. When, therefore, the Noble Lord refers to one committee not only the state of the Criminal Law, but that of the gaols, of transportation, and of that little ad-prisonments, and that the great subject of junct the hulks, he refers to it an inquiry which it can never conduct to an end; he proposes, as my Honourable Friend has said, to institute an investigation which must outlive a Parliament. The Noble Lord has in fact acknowledged, by his proposed subdivision, that it would be impossible for one committee to inquire into all the subjects which he would refer to it. And this impossibility he would evade by an unconstitutional violation of the usages of the House; as you, Sir, with the authority due to your opinions, have declared the proposition for subdividing a committee to be. I, on the other hand, in accordance with ancient usage, propose that the House shall itself nominate these separate committees. My second objection is, Sir, that the Noble Lord's notice, and the order made by the House yesterday upon it, do not embrace the purpose which I have in view. To prove this, I might content myself with a reference to the very words of the instruction under which his proposed committee is to proceed. It is directed "to inquire into the state and description of gaols, and other places of confinement, and into the best method of providing for the reformation, as well as for the safe custody and punishment of offenders." Now, what is the plain meaning of those expressions? Are they not the same offenders, whose punishment as well as whose reformation and safe custody is contemplated? And does not the instruction thus directly exclude the subject of Capital Punishment? The matter is too plain to be insisted on; Alderman Waithman. -- Ed. Let us now see whether my proposition casts a greater censure on the existing laws than his. Every motion for inquiry assumes that inquiry is necessary, that some evil exists, which may be remedied. The motion of the Noble Lord assumes thus much: mine assumes no more; it casts no reflection on the law, or on the magistrates by whom it is administered. With respect to the question whether Secondary Punishments should be inquired into before we dispose of the Primary, I have to say, that in proposing the present investigation, I have not been guided by my own feelings, nor have I trusted entirely to my i own judgment. My steps have been directed and assured by former examples. The first of these is the notable one in 1750, when, in consequence of the alarm created by the increase of some species of crimes, a committee was appointed “to examine into and consider the state of the laws relating to felonies, and to report to the House their opinion as to the defects of those laws, and as to the propriety of amending or repealing them." What does the Noble Lord say to this large reference, — this ample delegation, — this attack on the laws of our ancestors? Was it made in bad times, by men of no note, and of indifferent principles? I will mention the persons of whom the committee was composed : — they were, Mr. Pelham, then Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord -- substitution of hard labour and imprisonment for the punishment of death. In 1770, another alarm, occasioned by the increase of a certain species of crime, led to the appointment, on the 27th of No the same kind, of which Sir Charles Saville, Sir William Meredith, Mr. Fox, Mr. Serjeant Glynn, Sir Charles Bunbury, and others, were members. To that committee the reference was nearly the same as that which I am now proposing, though mine be the more contracted one. That committee was occupied for two years with the branch of the general inquiry which the Noble Lord proposes to add to the already excessive labours of an existing committee. In the second session they brought their report to maturity; and, on that report, a bill was introduced for the repeal of eight or ten statutes, which bill passed the House of Commons without opposition. I do not mean to enter into the minute history of that bill, which was thrown out in the House of Lords. It met with no hostility from the great ornaments of the House of Lords of that day, Lord Camden and Lord Mansfield; but it was necessarily opposed by others, whom I will not name, and whose names will be unknown to posterity. Chatham; Mr. George Grenville, afterwards Lord Grenville; Mr. Littleton and Mr. Charles Townshend, afterwards Secretaries of State; and Sir Dudley Ryder, the Attorney-General, afterwards Chief Justice of England. Those great lawyers and states-vember in that year, of another committee of men will, at least, not be accused of having been rash theorists, or, according to the new word," ultra-philosophers." But it will be thought remarkable that those great men, who were, in liberality, as superior to some statesmen of the present day, as in practical wisdom they were not inferior to them, found two sessions necessary for the inquiry into which they had entered. The first resolution to which those eminent and enlightened individuals agreed was, "that it was reasonable to exchange the punishment of death for some other adequate punishment." Such a resolution is a little more general and extensive than that which I shall venture to propose ; — such a resolution, however, did that committee, vested with the powers which I have already described, recommend to the adoption of the House. One circumstance, not necessarily connected with my present motion, I will take the liberty of mentioning : — to that committee the credit is due of having first denounced the Poor Laws as the nursery of crime. In this country pauperism and crime have always advanced in parallel lines, and with equal steps. That committee imputed much evil to the divisions among parishes on account of the maintenance of the poor. That committee too, composed of practical men as it was, made a statement which some practical statesmen of the present day will no doubt condemn as too large;—namely, "that the increase of crime was in a great measure to be attributed to the neglect of the education of the children of the poor." A bill was brought in, founded on the resolutions of the committee, and passed this House. It was however negatived in the House of Lords, although not opposed by any of the great names of that day, - by any of the luminaries of that House. Lord Hardwicke, for instance, did not oppose a bill, the principal object of which was the Sir, it is upon these precedents that I have formed, and that I bring forward my motion. I have shown, that the step I proposed to take accords with the usage of Parliament in the best of times, but that if we follow the plan recommended by the Noble Lord, we cannot effect the purpose which we have in view without evading or violating the usage of Parliament. Accepting, therefore, his concession, that a committee ought to be appointed for this investigation, here I might take my stand, and challenge him to drive me from this ground, which, with all his talents, he would find some difficulty in doing. But I feel that there is a great difference between our respective situations; and that although he last night contented himself with stating the evils which exist, without adverting to the other essential part of my proposal for a Parliamentary inquiry, — namely, the probability of a remedy, -I must take a different course. Although I cannot say that I agree with my Honourable Friend, who says that a Select Committee is not the proper mode of investigating this subject, yet I agree with him that there are two things necessary to justify an investigation, whether by a committee, or in any other manner: -the first is, the existence of an evil; the second is, the probability of a remedy. Far, therefore, from treating the sacred fabric reared by our ancestors more lightly, I approach it more reverently than does the Noble Lord. I should not have dared, merely on account of the number of offences, to institute an inquiry into the state of the Criminal Law, unless, while I saw the defects, I had also within view, not the certainty of a remedy (for that would be too much to assert), but some strong probability, that the law may be rendered more efficient, and a check be given to that which has alarmed all good men, the increase of crime. While I do what I think it was the bounden duty of the Noble Lord to have done, I trust I shall not be told that I am a rash speculator, — that I am holding out impunity to criminals, or foreshadowing what he is pleased to call "a golden age for crime." Sir Dudley Ryder, at the head of the criminal jurisprudence of the country, and Serjeant Glynn, the Recorder of London, an office that unhappily has the most extensive experience of the administration of Criminal Law in the world, — both believed a remedy to the evil in question to be practicable, and recommended it as necessary; and under any general reprobation which the Noble Lord may apply to such men, I shall not be ashamed to be included. I must now, Sir, mention what my object is not, in order to obviate the misapprehensions of over-zealous supporters, and the misrepresentations of desperate opponents. I do not propose to form a new criminal code. Altogether to abolish a system of law, admirable in its principle, interwoven with the habits of the English people, and under which they have long and happily lived, is a proposition very remote from my notions of legislation, and would be too extravagant and ridiculous to be for a moment listened to. Neither is it my intention to propose the abolition of the punishment of death. I hold the right of inflicting that punishment to be a part of the rights of self-defence, with which society as well as individuals are endowed. I hold it to be, like all other punishments, an evil when unnecessary, but, like any other evil employed to remedy a greater evil, capable of becoming a good. Nor do I wish to take away the right of pardon from the Crown. On the contrary, my object is, to restore to the Crown the practical use of that right, of which the usage of modern times has nearly deprived it. The declaration may appear singular, but I do not aim at realising any universal principle. My object is, to bring the letter of the law more near to its practice,— to make the execution of the law form the rule, and the remission of its penalties the exception. Although I do not expect that a system of law can be so graduated, that it can be applied to every case without the intervention of a discretionary power, I hope to see an effect produced on the vicious, by the steady manner in which the law shall be enforced. The main part of the reform which I should propose would be, to transfer to the statute book the improvements which the wisdom of modern times has introduced into the practice of the law. But I must add, that even in the case of some of that practice with which the feelings of good men are not in unison, I should propose such a reform as would correct that anomaly. It is one of the greatest evils which can befall a country when the Criminal Law and the virtuous feeling of the community are in hostility to each other. They cannot be long at variance without injury to one, perhaps to both. One of my objects is to approximate them;-to make good men the anxious supporters of the Criminal Law; and to restore, if it has been injured, that zealous attachment to the law in general, which, even in the most tempestuous times -- |