Star. — London, England, 1818-05-15 00:00:00

I ti 1 • ) 1 , l l' 1 11 V ; t r j )1 to ! • f I , ;s' ' II, , 1; 4 I 1 , 1• i• • ' I be resisted. Qn what ground could this be done, unless it wirkthatv,otga itaiLe a case against his Nlajesty3MitDav? 'k A(Ao%ll2lw.)—He conclUded by moving for copies of any letters, or the substance of any communication which may have taken place between the Commissioners for inquiring into the roes, emoluments, and offices of Courts of Justice and the Secretary of State for the Home Depart ment, relative to the expediency of filling up any office in the Commissary Courts of Scotlan d, and for copies of similar letters, or communications from any Commissary or Commissary Clerk to the Home Department—( hear, hear.) Mr. BATHURST had not heard any thing stated by the Noble Lord which could induce him to pro.. duce the correspondence alluded to, supposing it to exist. As to the appointment to an office, the aboli tion. of. which had been recommended by the Com missioners, it had not been corruptly made, with the view of influencing any election. The nature of the Commissary Courts in Scotland was like that of our inferior Ecclesiastical Courts. No probates of wills could be obtained without them, and they could not therefore be abolished until some other arrangement had been made to supply their place, in order that the interests of the public should not suffer. Feeling the importance of their duties, the Court of Session took upon itself to appoint Commissaries ad interim, till his Majesty's pleasure should be known. By the laws of Scotland, those offices were given to individuals quaindiu se bene gesserint, so that whenever the ap pointment was confirmed by Government,. it of ne cessity conferred a life interest in the office. It could not be understood that appointments ad interim were to remain unsettled until Parliament should have taken some measure on the subject. He (Mr. Ba thurst) owed it to his Noble Friend (Lord Sidmouth) to declare, that no representation of the kind alluded to by the Noble Lord has been made to the Home Department, either by the Board of Commissioners or any individual of them. The Noble Lord had elerefure laboured under a complete mistake. Sir JOHN NEWPORT had seen, in several in stances, that when commissions had been carried against the will of Ministers, justice was not done to the Public. In the present case, the Commissioners had amply done their duty, and could not be respon sible for the inaction of the Government. The per seas connected with the Administration of helm . ), had acted in a very different manner: they had gone t) the full extent of the recommendations of the Commissioners, and instituted proceedings and legis lative measures to secure to the public the benefit; of Close commissions. Mr. WILLIAM DUNDAS contended that the last report of the Commissioners had only been presented and ordered to be printed on the Lith of February, 1818 ; and that as the question was not merely one of abolishing certain offices, but of supplying their place when abolished, it could scarcely be expected that any measure could have yet been brought on tie subject. Mr. J. P. GRANT insisted that it was neither more nor less than a job, to give some persons a compen sation for offices granted to them for life. A Bill had been introduced to abolish these offices, and why had it not been acted upon? The Commissioners of ln spiky had reported that they ought to be abolished, both in then Reports of last year a! , .d this: therefore the least Government could have done was to sus pend the giving of these appointments ; and yet one appointment had been made on the 12th of March, 1817, therefore this person had a claim to compen sation, which appeared to be the only object in ap pointing. him. On these grounds he concurred an toe motion. Air. CLIVE stated the proceedings of the different Commissions of Inquiry, and defer.ded the appoint ment, as being advised to be necessary, and as having been made before the presentation of the Report. Lord ARCHIBALD HAMILTON replied to the different arguments against the motion, and explained some points on which he had been misapprehended. The question was then put and negatived. FORGERY OF BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES. Sir J. MACKINTOSH rose, agreeably to his no tice, to move for a Committee to inquire into the means of preventing of Forgeries of Bank of Eng land Notes, and to report their opinion thereon, and said, that notwithstanding all he had before heard, he could not, till he had been made acquainted with their final determination, have supposed that those persons who had, I.e thought, too much weight in that House, the Bank Directors, would resist this motion, the natural result of the course of inquiry on which the House had already entered, by agreeing to the motions which he had proposed. The House Lad already established an important principle, that the concerns of the Bank of England, connected with an evil so enormous as the increase of Forgeries,' should not be considered as out of the roach of the cognizance of Parliament. The argument on which the Bank had relied had been finally overruled—yet that pretence, flimsy as it was, that the concerns of the Bank must be considered only as those of a pri vate company, had been relied upon till the House was on the point of dividing, but the Bank Directors, apprehensive of the result of that appeal, had con sented to the inquiry into the legal expenses pro duced by one of the greatest evils which could afflict the country. Though the Bank had now determined to resist further inquiry, he was not without hopes, that if those independent Members who had de servedly so much weight as well with the House as the Country, would again show themselves, neither the Ministers nor the Bank would press for a division is wh'cli they would anticipate a defeat. In calling the attention of the 1-I.Juse once more to this subject, he wished to spare both their time and their patience —to dwell on the unspeakable importance of the sub ject would be a waste of both. It had been admitted on the former discussion, that the magnitude of the evil called for inquiry ; and it appeared the unani mous sense of the House that some measure was ne cessary to mitigate, at the least, this evil. Few ques tions had excited more interest among the public at large ; and perhaps the greatest interest had been felt among the quietest part of the community —among those who took the least interest in the ordinary course of political affairs, or in those questions which most agitated that House—at the spectacle of guilt and blood which had followed the stoppage of cash payments—(hear, hear). It was useless to state a num ber of facts, to which no strength would be added by 1, , • * % i 4 \ repetition—but there was am fact, mentioned in the Returns which had been laid before the House since his former motion. In the twelve years before the suspension of cash payments, there was one capital execution for forgery. An execution for forgery was then one of the ratest punishments ; in many years there was not an instance of it. In the last seven years, 101 persons suffered dEath for that crime— (hear, hear),—that crime, for which in twelve years only one person had suffered, There was another comparison, equally striking and horrible: for this crime, for which,-in all the kingdom and in twelve years, only one person had suffered, forty-four had suffered in London and Middlesex in the last seven years. Executions for forgery now stood at the head of the list of capital punishments : they were far more numerous than executions for murder—than executions for burglary ; they were double all the executions for robbery of all sorts, and much greater than executions for all other offences taken together' —(hear). He implored the House to pause before they determined that they would not take any steps, if not to remove this evil (and he feared without the resumption of cash payments it could not be entirely removed), at least to mitigate it. How would they answer to their constituents—how would they an swer to their consciences, that they had left that to be performed by others, which they owed to the peo ple of England at once to perform themselves ? (hear) If the facts he had stated were not enough to force the imperative claims of this growing . evil upon their attention, the returns of prosecutions in the late years —in 1816, 1817, and three months of 1818—would exhibit an increase almost so great as to bid defiance to belief. In the three months of this year the num ber was so great, that if the whole year was equally fertile in crime, it would exhibit three times the num ber of the last year, yet the last year was worse than any which had preceded it. A circumstance which he must allude to was the expensiveness of these pro secutions. In this, as in other reflections, he meant to state nothing invidious towards any persons con nected with the Bank of England ; he meant to shew the system which the stoppage of cash payments had imposed upon the House. In the last year, which was the greatest, the expense was 30,0001. In the three months of the present year it was nearly 20,000/.' The general average for the prosecution of each in dividual was 265/. This struck him as a most mon strous expense—as not only monstrous brit alarming —(hear). Jt was to be remembered, that if six per sons were included in the same indictment, the ex pense was not necessarily greater than for one. He was not very conversant with the expenses of prose cutions, but he believed that if he said the average was ten times greater than that of ordinary criminal prose cutions, he should not be wide of the mark. In some years the average had been 342/. 3401. 263/.; but the general average was' 65/. on each person prosecuted. lle mentioned these enorthous and suspicious expen ses, nut as a charge against the Bank, but as an ad-1 ditional n ason why the House should investigate the subject by a Cominittee of its own, and trust to no other authority—(hear, hear).—ln former years the forgeries had been chiefly confined to small notes ; by the last returns it appeared that a proportion of forgeries for larger notes had now occurred; a me lancholy proof that the skill and boldness of the cri minals in the forgery of small notes, had tempted them to try their fortune on large notes. If these attempts became more frequent, though the piper currency should be brought back to its sound state, it would for some time retain a taint by the forgeries of the larger notes. He could now venture to say, that the severity of punishment had no effect in di minishing or suppressing the crime. Though he might have asserted this from his general observation, and from the facts connected with this subject, he was still more strongly fortified in it, by the decla ration of a most respectable Judge, at the last As sizes for Lancaster—he meant the Lord Chief Baron. That Magistrate had stated, that the previous pu nishments had produced no effect (for the crimes of thope on whom he had passed sentence of death had been all committed since the executions at the last Assizes), and that therefore (unless some other means could be devised) it only remained for him to exe cute the law in its severity. As a Judge this was the only course which remained for him ; but by the parenthesis which he had ins2rted he had recommcit dcd to the Legislature to deliver him fromthe neces sity of cruel and inefficaci3us punishments. It was no wonder that in the county where the executions had been so I - lel:lent as to draw forth these observa tions from the Bench, that the attention of the inha bitants should be attracted to it. A few days ago a Petition had been presented from Liverpool by the Right IL:flour:Lb' , Gentleman (Mr. Canning), which deserved to be read, as well for the liberality of its principles as•for the precision of its language. The petitioners stated that they viewed with feelings of alarm the increase of prosecutions for forgery toy which the number of capital punishments was in creased, the country degraded in the eyes of other nations, and the great pi inciples of humanity endan gered. They said that without presuming to inquire whether the Bank, in times past, had done all that as in its power to do, yet the nation was not con vinced that this was the case; and though a Com mittee of the Directors had been continually consi dering the subject, yet as nothing had resulted from that inquiry, they were not the less anxious to have the subject inquired into by the great Council of the Nation. They also stated, that if the forgeries con tinued to increase as they had dose, the people of the County of Lancaster would he compelled, from a regard to the security of mercantile transactions, to resort to the circulation of Country Bank Notes. The town of Liverpool, it was to be recollected, was the second commercial town in the empire. The pe tition was signed by persons of all parties, and would be of itself of the highest moment ; but when it was considered that the petition was from the County of Lancaster, where they had the greatest experience of the circulation of Bank of England Notes—and where the most inveterate prejudices existed against Country Bank Notes, since the failures of 1793—the opinion of that respectable body of petitioners came with every circumstance which could give it weight. The petitioners had rather expose themselves to the chance of insolvency, than to the greater evils of forgery. When the state of that great and populous county was such, how could the House of Commons, with a reg ard to its character, refuse immediate inquiry. A melancholy document had been prepared at the Home Office—a Summary of the State o Crimes n• ~.. in the last Twelve Years ; which no enlightened friend of his country could behold without sorrow. No fall in commerce, no defeats in war, no deficiency , in revenue could produce such an effect upon those who estimated the real strength of the country.— The capital executions in the years from 1805 to 1811, were about 390; in the years from 1811 to 1818, about 580 ; which numbers, as he was re minded by an Hon. Friend (Mr. Bennet) whose atten tion had been so constantly and honourably directed to this subject, were in the proportion of one to eight to the whole number of crimes. He was aware that the number of crimes was not in itself a criterion of , the morality of a nation. Many nations full of acti vity and wealth, abounding in temptations, and in the qualities which when misdirected were produc tive of criminality, would afford a longer list of offences than the records of a lethargic people, who had no virtues, though they had not many crimes. Yet when in the same nation the crimes increased, it must be taken as an evidence of a change of morals for the worse. This was not the time to enter into the discussion, but if he were casually called on to name them, he should not allude to the causes to which it had often been attributed. It appeared to him to depend most on what might be called the economical condition of the people, than on what were called moral causes—on the ebbs and flows of demand and supply—on the fluctuation of wages and prices—evils inseparably connected with an incon vertible paper money. Variations such as these were enough to make the ignorant think they were the sport of some malignant demon, against whom their most strenuous efforts were often fruitless ; and from this probably they derived a desperate and gambling' character. By the vicissitudes of 'a long war—by the return of peace—by that worst of scourges, an inconvertible paper money, • which no nation had been able to bear up against but this—had this been effected ? He should not dwell on the number of deaths, though it had been fallaciously compared with other things to which there was no resemblance —to deaths in the course of nature or in battle.— 'l.)eath, in the course of nature, was not a reasonable cause of apprehension. Death in the performance of duty, or in obedience to the commands of honour, might be enviable: but a life of guilt, followed by a death of disgrace—an instruction in corruption, and a bequest of ignominy to his children—this was the, fate of the forger; this, and not the loss of life alone, was afflicting to the friend of his country. He should say nothing of the loss to the Public by the Bank Notes, though an Honourable Baronet (sir James Graham) had stated, that in the North of England one half of the Notes were forged. By this system, the smaller tradesmen were the greatest sufferers, because they were the most liable to imposition; yet but too many of them were reconciled to submit to l forgery and fraud, rather than engage in litigation, or expose themselves to suspicion and the danger of farther loss. A lesson indeed of a very impressive nature had recently been taught to persons of this description. A tradesman who had a 51. Note, which was pronounced a forgery at the Bank, took proceed ings in The Marshalsea Court against the parent of the girl from whom he thought he received it. In this, however, he was mistaken; but this mistake arose from the resemblance of the girl to Emma Connor, of whom the House had already heard, and' who was known to have been active in circulating forged Notes in the tradesman's neighbourhood.— The consequence of the mistake was, that the trades man incurred costs to the amount of 2JI. so*that he WAS altogether a loser, through this forgery and ef fort to vindicate himself, to the anent of SOL The public, being so liable to suffer through the existing system, while the Bank was perfectly secure, he called upon that House to inquire whether any, and what remedy could be devised for such an evil. He trus ted that the common sense of the House and the country would not again be insulted by the preten ce that it would not be becoming to interfere with the conduct of the Bank—on the ground, forsooth! that it formed a company of private traders, who were entitled to manage their affairs according to their own judgment, without any legislative controul; for this Bank was notoriously a public Company, of whose conduct that House was not only entitled, but on this occasion speci:lly bound to take cognizance. If, however, the Bank were merely private traders, and that their conduct was productive of such consequences to the country as those he had stated, it was the duty of that House, as the guardians of public justice and morality, to take notice of such conduct, and endea vour to provide some remedy for the mischief which it occasioned. But the fact was, that from the con nection subsisting between the Bank and the Govern-' ment, the Mint might as well be regarded as a pri vate Company as the Bank of England. Any evil, then, resulting from the system of the Bank, was ob viously a proper subject foe the consideration of th at House, and the conduct of the Bank itself rendered the interposition of the House the more necessary in this instance, for it was remarkable, that within the 21 Pears which had elapsed since the R estr i ct i on on C as h ayments was enacted, the Bank had not taken a single step to save the Public from the evils of For gery, while they had adbpted abundant measures to save themselves—(hear, hear!) The liability of the public, indeed, to suffer from forgery and fraud was quite as much at present as it was in 1797. Had not then the public a right to expect that some inquiry would be instituted by that House, in order to ascer tain whether their liability to sutler was the conse quence of the supineness of the Bank of England, or whether any remedy' could be devised to put an end to altogether, or to diminish, that liability ?—(Hear.) Such an inquiry was, he maintained, the imperative duty of the House of Commons, and the People re quired and expected from it the performance of that duty. If upon inquiry the evil which he had describ ed was found irremediable, that discovery would serve to guide the judgment of the House in deter- I mining upon the policy of continuing that system of restraining cash payments, which gave birth to such an accumulation of evil. The Bank itself, indeed, should consider that an inquiry ought to be institut ed, in consequence of the strong prejudice prevailing against it, and that nothing could serve to remove that prejudice, but a vigorous, thorough, and efficient inquiry. It was, however, not only with a view to ' guide the judgment of the H ouse as to t h e po li cy o f I continuing the restriction of cash payments, or to vindicate the character of the Bank, that the inquiry Ihe proposed was necessary but in order to diminish crime, to stop the effusion of blood, and to spare the feel's* of the Public f rom t h at horrible c-- am occasioned. It wa s i a d t . lll which the pre s e nt sY 'j mainly with a view to pet an end to these events, 4 well as t o promote the inte rests o f morality, that I , t pressed for this inqui r y. H e. d e l not mean to attr7. any thing snore exceptionable to the ljr: src ch i of the Bank, than th e failings whit. corn:no:ls longed to ma n ki n d, when lir o b served, ill= Ter were rather too much attacked to r , ad...r- ;.c. tom to encourage protects of improy.. r ,,„, t , were, he feared, too apt to --camittim:. miss such projects by some COMpen.lio.us ten old maxim, which might be learned t 0.0... r mothers ; therefore, lie apfrelunoted that a encouragement had not been holdout r of skill and talent to devise an impoo..,t fabricating Bank Notes. That encouraesnit he hoped and calculated, be the ciirea-quec, appointment of the Committee. Ile v..n gratin as to promise himself that the itailtaltirt be able to discover the means of prevean altogether ; but he was encoura.mi means might he found consist...rah:A evil. In America, which. had here of public felicity, and which, h e h., become the model of legislative weir a circulation of no less than twenty mil, Notes. That was, indeed, notoriololy nation in the world in paper curency a. commercial wealth ; yet forgery was not a offence in any of the American S.ates. The An... can Bankers were not encouraged to supineness or indifference, as to the multiplicat-- forgeries, by the terror of t h e g ibb et ; t h ey the: . took care to exercise ingenui t y in fabricat;.44 notes; and hence forgery Vas ext reme ly Tarr He repeated the statement, that he meant ta • out the prospect of totally preventing fr. . he felt that it was incumb ent upon the . all that was within its power to seduce the evil : .1 this he must deem practicable from what he tila beard ; for lie was informed by very competent r.. thorny, that any boy, who was sir touialis under te instruction of an artist, could easily solarise to f or ., a Bank of England Note —not, however, s. _ pow upon the Bank itself ; for those viccerred managing that Establishment, took good car- - vide against that, but so as to imps: up‘oi of the people whom it was peculiarly ti: that House to protect. It was the duty of also, to seek the protection of the people from r. forgeries, especially as their circulation r•ar - sive, and it ill became the Dim:: effort whatever towards preventing forgery, met:, from the belief that complete success was u, able. According to his sorpressioa, which he Was also the impression of the House, this t was worthy of inquiry, if the result tvere only: one life, or to reduce in auy de-gree that h: which so much afflicted the country under the system. He could not, indeed, ima i .:ize 4.. object more deserving the attention of the —According to some Gentlemen, the extert. crime of forgery was not so much to be other crimes had increased of late to such a But it should be recollected, that it •X2S the proprr.y of crimes to act and re-act upon each sthor ; acid it was particularly the characteristic of forgery to spread its toils, not merely for those who were habituated to other descriptions of criminality, but to thous! were not capable of any other crime—for the eat a boldness and strength necessary for other crime , while forgery held out a trap fur the timid and t. t weak, for the old and the young—( Hear, hear... — It seemed, indeed, from the toleration cf the prer. system, as if the Legislature opened a school f guilt, to train up those for a particular crime . : :3 were incapable of any other description of crini .. m.ey —(hear, hear.)—The Learned Gentleman, War peculiarly eloquent and impressive exhortation to the House to iitstitute the inquiry, and for the satisfactin of the public mind, as well as for the vindication el its own character, to reject the idea of delegating . rs inquisitorial powers to any other than a Coe:frame of its own body, concluded with moving for the ap pointment of a Committee to inquire into the me ars of more effectually preventing the Forgery tat t..e Notes of the Bank of England, and to repcn its opt• nion thereon to the House. 7: •~ Oe al• 1 , !..1. I.t'.. ere L: to it, gin.- ..: c~ , tie l'r i C::t:> to ciLvlke r.T ::vu;:-. ray : The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said he was perfectly ready to acknowledge that the sub ject was one of the utmost importance ; but bethought the Hon. and Learned Gentleman had by no means taken the course most likely to lead to a satisfactory result. It appeared to him that an investiljation this kind required a degree of patient inquiry, en mination, and attention, which test' Members of that House were likely to give at this advanced petiodui the Session'; it was therefote his intention not to ne gative the motion, but to propose, as an Amend ment, an Address to the Throne, praying the ap pointment of a Commission to inquire into this im portant subject, with a view to obtain from their it vestigations a more complete Report than it v...s possible'to expect from the labours of the Hoot, — By this mode a result satisfactory to the House a=d beneficial to the public, was likely to be obtaimd. The necessity of a very considerable expense aae..d ing such an inquiry he thought must sthle every Gentleman. He must confess, that having paid some . attention to the subject himself, the more he inq uired into it, the more difficulties he found there ;Tete ti encounter. Many plans had been submitted to him; but on referring them to others mire competent t 9 examine them, lie had always had objections points! out which he could not discover. Bat althougn he did not despair of some improvement being made in the Notes, yet he must caution the House against ex pecting to find a radical remedy. By re such a Con mission there would be the best chance of übtaitien a full inquiry. But b e f ore su bmitting his propor tion, he could not refrain from making some obse:- vations on the statement of the I and Learned Gentleman, which contained a most untiamded ex aggeration of the nature and extent of the eviL That it was great and called for remedy he did not dem', for the insecurity of property would alone afford an irresistible argument for every inquiry. But with respect to the increase in the number of indictments this year, he could not avoid opposing to the Ho- nourable and Learned Gentleman's arguments the deductions which he had formed. From his state ment one would be led to conclude, that'until th suspension of Bank payments, forgeries were almost wholly unknown, and that they had increased to a Lost alarming extent in a short period , of ttme. 0 10N y t . i fpg U sll - fa I d . 1 M ~. t !..i. .lit iv •er . he PP ne . 11 rim luu ere DI ..a elts c: f ad I:tb to. tr../7 flea we: pa bun Pl*. Col bet dm Dia TOO to ' the rd ti.e be 2 tie ic.o me De alt n:.e.