The Sun. — London, England, 1830-06-08 00:00:00

aid re ilr. file It 0- his, ,ord Ica !ere mit. d of act Nita vere, were ouse and coin- the late ° 'tell, vitle rierid ad beef ialtri AEI B been The Int to JER m• Do )osed some ie es )rt of a cir f the ecta molt is in- Bogota. From the Caraccas Mr. Cockburn pro ceeded to Carthagena with Bolivar; and there had, with that distinguished individual, various most important and useful communications—so im portant, that. he ;bought_ he should best consult the public service Ji a personal communication of them to his own Government; and, therefore, at the _ _ . , request of Bolivar, as vital as on the suggestions of his own judgment, he returned from Carthagena to lay these communications before his Majesty's Mi- nisters. It might or might not be that, in so do'ng, Mr. Cockburn judged erroneously. But the tines tion for his Majesty's Government to consider was, whether the error was such as to entitle them to deprive him of the salary to which, in the ordinary course of things,.he was entitled up to the period of his arrival. • Their decision was, that there had not been the criminal misconduct which would justly subject him to any such mulct. He now came to the eases of Mr. Chad and Mr. Fox. As to the ap pointment of Mr. Chad, there was nothing in it in the slightest degree irregular; and it could not be denied that his salary did by no means exceed the . expences necessary in the situation which he beld. He fully agreed in all that had been said with respect to the character of Mr. Fox, and he thought that when Itis case was impartially considered, it would be admitted that what had been done respecting him was not done, as had beeri alleged, with any view to prnmote: ,party purposes. He was at the present rnotornt_on his passage from Buenos Ayres. The be was persuaded, could not but feel that most of the objections raised to this vote were ex tremely. ill founded ; the more especially as it did not exceed the votes of antecedent years. Sir J. GRAHAM said that 27,4211. was the amount of last vear, as we understood. The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER resumed. The estimate for last year was, he ob served, 28,0001., and it was the same for the present year. The whole of next year would be absorbed in the Civil List. Sir ROBERT WILSON said that Mr. Cock burn inspired General Bolivar with so .much confi dence, that that distinguished individual entrusted him with information for the British Government which was of the highest importance; and he im :plored him, as an agent of the British Government and a friend to Colombia, to return home and give to Mr. Canning himself those explanations which it was esteemed important should be personally made. The facts being as he stated, he must decidedly object to, the salary of Mr. Cockburn being cut down. Colo!'lel. DAVIES expressed some surprise to &I& his Honourable and Gallant Friend behind him volunteering a defence of the Government. Sir ROBERT WILSON merely volunteered a statement of the truth. Colonel DAVIES never heard a more inefficient defence than that made by the Right Hon. Gentle man. , There was A.). ffi : um of 1,700/. charged for the journey from Vera Cruz to London for Mr. Ward ; and there was 6001. for house-rent for Mr. Cockburn, whi*Speat but three Weeks in the Caraccas. There ajipared46 be no reason why Mr. Cockburn should come home ;. he might very easily have sent home some confidential person. The objection to the pre sent vote was levelled against his Majesty's Govern ment, meaning thereby the present Administration, for Lord Dudley refused Mr. Cockburn's salary. Further,he wished to know why Mr. Gordou'should have been retained a whole year in London doing no public service. An HON. MESIBER observed, that it would be extremely unfair to keep Mr. Gordon all that time in London at his own expense, when, from the moment of his appointment, he was incapacitated from employing himself otherwise than in the ser vice of Government. Mr. HUME said the amendment of his Hon. Friend the Member for Cumberland ought to be agreed to, were it only for the purpose of showing that the House disapproved of the conduct of his Majesty's Government. He held in his hand a me morandum made last year, to which he should pre sently call attention, but first he must be allowed to observe, that nothing could be more preposterous than the expense to which the country was put on account of our DiplomaticlVlissions. If the House Would but just pay a little attention to the papers, they would • see what all this boasted economy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer came to. In 1828 the sum in this department was 445,0001. In 1829 it was put down at 407,0001, and for the last year it was fixed at 366,000/., forming an apparent re ' duction of 40,0001. But the fair way of examining it was to see what the average of the years from 1788 to 1793 was. The expenses in this branch, at that period, were 113,0001. Even in 1816 they only amounted to 226,0001., which, though too much, was greatly less than the amount charged of late years. The point to which he wished to direct the attention of the House was this. His Majesty's Ministers had promised reduction; no reduction was made, and any expectation that it would be made, unless insisted on by the House, was per fectly hopeless. Mr. S. CANNING rather recommended the House to look forward to future reductions in other years, titan interfere with the existing arrangements. He thought that it was in the minor appointments, rathe r than in those of Ambassadors, that retrench ments might most judiciously be made. In Naples, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, where there were maritime interests to support, it might be very well to have Ministers; but there were other places where the general opinion was, that there was no necessity r epresentative of this country. Tuscany was one for a of those instances; though the Noble Lord himself, who occupied that station, bad uniformly succeeded in conciliating the esteem and regard of all who Came in contact with him. In Germany also, he conceived that there was room for retrenchment. Bavaria, Saxony, and Wurtemberg were places of So small importance, that he thought this country would be sufficiently represented in all those places by keeping a Minister at Frankfort. From the as surances given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he trusted that another year would not be suffered to pass away without retrenchment taking place, such as will prove satisfactory to the House of Commons. From what he had heard stated, he thought that a satisfactory answer had been given to the most important allegations of the Hon. Bart. Mr. HOBHOUSE--To the objections taken to the present vote, it appeared to him that no answer had been given; and the case of Mr. Gordon was • one- that most particularly called for explanation : Ave certainly thought that a Cabinet Minister ought to be so good as to explain why 5,500/. had been paid to that' gentleman, for doing little more than • nothing. He did not wish to deny or depreciate the services of that gentleman, but they were all aware what. his connections were, and he was astonished -- that a sense of decency and decorum had not pre '!t vented the taking of such a step.—(Cheers.) He 'should have thought that, under the circumstances, they would rather have been disposed to cut away the salaries of relations than thus obtrude them upon' the country.—(Cheers.) He did not mean to say that gentlemen, because they were the bro thers of Secretaries of State for the Foreign De partment, were to be deprived of their just meed of reward; but when there was any doubt in the case, he thought delicacy ought to be allowed to have some little weight, and that those who of course • followed politics for honour, and not for profit, ought to tell their brothers that such uncalied-for pensions could not be allowed.—(Cheers.) With respect to South America, he was one of those that wished that every encouragement - should be given to its risii4g Republics, and God knew that we had done little 'rou g h for th e cause o f lib erty ; an d , t h ere f ore , he d no desire t o c h ec k any countenance being afforded to those States. But at the same time there was som e little medium to be observed ; and 'they were not to be told every day, that because Something bras going to be done, there was to he an unlimited call upon the public purse. As to this being a personal attack, such an idea was quite out of the question. It was 'no personal object that they had in view; all that they were attacking was the system—a system of confidence which had been too often shown, and on which the House of Corn mons ought .never to proceed. When a gentleman was sent to the Brazils and it turned out that in- stead of being—there, he was here, he thought that it was impossible for the House of Commoni to allow such a vote to pass till something like a secu rity had ,been given that there should be no recur rence of what had happened in this instance. The CHANCELLOR. of the EXCHEQUER —The Hon. Gentleman was under a mistake when he said "chat Mr. Gordon had been in this country all the time. The fact was, that from the time of his accepting the appointment, he either was in the Brazils, or on the sea on his journey, until Septem , ber. From September to January, 1829, it was true that he was in this country; but during that period, though he wag still engaged in business connected with his appointment,•he only received at the rate of half his regular salary; and in January, 1829, his salary ceased altogether, though it was not till April in that year that he had ceased to be employed in the affairs of his office. Mr. WARD—Shortly after he became a Member of that House, he recollected Mr. Canning stating that he felt it to be his duty to enter on a series of experiental diplomacies to ascertain what relations could be entered upon between this country and South America. He at the same time stated, that t was impracticable for him to define what the na ure or extent of thosediplomacies might be; but he did state, that as the - necessaries of life were much enhanced in value in those countries, it would be necessary to make allowance for that circum s:anee. It was with thii view that we entered upon the course then proposed. Lord HOWICK—The question was, not whe ther they should cut down the missions to South America, but whether they were to be for keeping gentlemen nominally there, but really at home, or else on the high seas between England and America, doing no duty at all. He could hardly be persuaded that Government would refuse to consent to the amendment of the Hon. Baronet, without further reasons being given for that refusal.—(Hear, bear.) The Right Hon. Gentleman had rested upon the estimates of last year; but his Hon. Friend had taken a-leaf from his own book, and in the reduc tions he had proposed to make, he had cut off nc thing useful or serviceable, but only such things as were encouraging a profligate and shameful ex penditure.—(Hear, hear.—He agreed with the Hon. Member for Westminster, that there was no desire to attack individuals; on' the contrary, he thought those very individuals had no less right to complain than the public—for they had a right to complain—of being kept in London, and receiving a salary for doing nothing. The mere amount of money wasted in outfits was enormous; from the documents it appeared that the charge in four years had been no less than 7,1661. It might be very true that Mr. Cockburn's health was such as to preclude his residence in South , America, and that there were very sufficient reasons for not sending Mr. Chad or Mr. Turner there, but all that could be said, if this were the case, was, that there had been a great want of care on the part of Government in not managing their appointments so as to avoid the expence of three outfits before one person was really sent out to undertake the duty. Sir JAMES GRAHAM replied. The gallery was then cleared for a division, when there appeared— For the amendment 99 Against it llB Majority --I9 FORGERIES PUNISHMENT BILL. The Order of the Day for the third reading of this Bill was then read. On the motion that the Bill be now read a third a third time, Sir J. MACINTOSH said, that he rose to pro pose an amendment to the Bill, similar in its nature to that which he had already proposed in the Com mittee. Having been unable to attend regularly in hs place in the House, he was not aware till the present evening that the Bill had already advanced so far as its present stage, and he was therefore at some loss as to the manner in which he should move his amendment in point of form. His amendment went to repeal the penalty of death in all cases of forgery, except that of forgery of wills—an excep tion to which he sacrificed his own judgment against his will, out Of deference to many respectable Mere• bers of Parliament. Having proposed the repeal 0 the punishment of death in all cases of forgery, ex. cept shut of the forgery of wills,—which he admitted was attended with peculiar circumstances, distin guishing it from all others,—his intention was to propose that any person, against whom a conviction for forgery should pass, should lie, in prison, either with or without hard labour, at home, fur the space of 11 years ; or if sent abroad to a penal colony, should be transported for any term exceeding that number of years. He proposed to give not only the power of inflicting either of these punishments, but also that of accumulating both, whenever the circum stances of the case should be so atrocious as to de serve the greatest severity. He would also vest a power in the Crown, authorizing it to treat all persons convicted of forgery in such a manner as would mark forgery as an offence of a blacker die than any other which was not directed against life, nor attended with violence. It was likewise his wish to take away the power which the Governors of our colonies, or which the Governor of New South Wales, at least, possessed over all convicts within their government,—namely, that of mitigat ing the punishment to which they were condemned. In order to answer the obvious objection,—that the importance of employing persons of education in the public service in new and remote colonies would lead, first to the pardon, and then to the employ ment in public situations, of persons convicted of forgery, who were generally persons of education— in order, he said, to answer that obvious objection, he proposed to take away all power of remitting or relaxing the punishment for forgery, except by a re presentation to the King of the grounds on which it was proposed to remit it, and by a remission of it by the King at home. These were the objects of the clause which he proposed to the House to bring up in a few minutes. (The Right Hon. Gentleman here consulted with some of his friends near him, and with the clerk of the House as to the proper mode, in point of form, of proposing his amend ment.) The first proposition which he should make to the House would be, that in page 3, line 7, the words, " shall suffer the punishment of death," be struck out of the Bill. If he should succeed in that proposition, we understood him to say, that he should not object to let the Bill be read a third time. After it was read a third time, he should propose to bring up his clause as a rider to the Bill. Mr. F. BUXTON took that opportunity of ris ing, not so much with a view of entering upon the discussion of this particular clause as with a view of removing an erroneous impression that had got abroad, in consequence of the speech made on a former evening by the Right Hon. Baronet oppo site. As this was an occasion in which party feel ings were not likely to interfere with the object which they all had in view—he meant the attain ment of truth—he was quite certain that the Right Hon. Baronet would not complain of his conduct if he now proceeded to show that the facts on which he had laid so much stress had been erroneously stated. There was nothing on which the Right Hon. Baronet had laid greater stress than his state ment respecting the enormous amount of the trans actions which were daily passing through the banks of the metropolis. The Right Hon. Baronet had stated, that there had passed through the clearing houses, during four days of May, cheques for no less a sum of money than 10,000,0001. sterling, and that there had only been four prosecutions in the last six months for forgeries upon the London bankers ; and the inference which the Right Hon. Baronet had drawn from this statement, of the mag nitude of the transactions of the London bankers, and of the rarity of prosecutions for forgery upon them,was this—that protection was afforded to property from the severity with which every invasion of it was punished. He was sure that when the Right lion. Baronet made that statement he was not aware of this fact--that of all the cheques which were issued fur the payment of the 10,000,000/. of which he had spoken, there was not one hat was liable even tl the w,saility of a forgery,— Cheers.)—The House would see at once, from the neria which that department of banking, was conducte , l, that such must inevitably be the case. A.trailesman pays into his banker a cheque on another hanker, which be has received from his cu , t6m ,, r. That cheque goes to the clearing-house, there it is exchanged f other cheques, and the money up -n it is not paid until the morning of the next day. Thus there were three cheques, by which a forgery was rendtred so - difficult - as to b almost impos sible. First, you know from whom you received the cheque; secondly, you had time given you to inquire whether it was a forged cheque or not; and thirdly, you did not pay the cheque till the next day. • On this point he would take the liberty of reading to the House a letter full of valuable information which he had received from Mr. William Thomas, of 42, I t ombard-street, an eminent hill-broker, well known in the city. The Hon. Member here read the letter, in which the writer stated that he had been for 39 year+ . engaged in business connected with tanking, that for 20 years he had been actually a clerk in a banking-house, that for other 12 years be had been an inspector of the clearing. house, and that for the remainder of the time he had been a bil'-broker. He stated that during the whole of that time he did not recollect that any forged !heque had ever passed through the clearing-house, or that my banker had suffered loss from any fraud so committed. He (Mr. F. Buxton) conten'led upon this authority that the clearing-houses had a tendency to prevent forgeries; . . and one alternative, which he expected would he derived from a mitigation of the severity of the existing law was, that the bankers would be compelled to adept a sys- tern of precaution, which would prevent the possibility of forgery being committed upon them. - He must• inform the House that it was well known in the city that there were in Lombard-street some bankers who would prose- ' cute, and some bankers who would not prosecute for for• very ; and yet, strange as it might appear, it was never theless true, that whenever forgeries were committed upon bankers in the city, it was upon those bankers who prosecuted and who looked for protection against forgery in the severity of the law. The reason was obvious : one party rested en the severity of the law, and took little precaution ; the other party, abhorring the severity of the law, looked not to it for protection, but to their own pre caution.—( Hear.)—He would also take the liberty of men tioningr, another fact to the House, which be considered worthy of its consideration. Amongst the various per sons examined before the Committee which sat upon the criminal laws in ISI9 was a banker, who deposed in his evidence, that on account of the severity with which for gery was punished, he declined prosecuting any forgery which he detected upon his bank. He (Mr. F. Buxton) had been afraid, that whenever the knowledge of that cir- cumstance should get abroad, that banker would be a se vere sufferer; and in consequence he (Mr. F. Buxton) had recently asked him, whether, in the ten years which had elapsed since he bad given his evidence, he had been a large sufferer by forgery ? Ilia reply was--" In no case have I paid a forged cheque. .In consequence of the _ _ resolution to which I told the Committee that I had come, I consider myself as placed out of the pale of the law, and I therefore have recourse to the greatest precaution, which as yet has kept me out of the reach of forgeries. "—(Hear, hear.)—Another fact, on which the Right Hon. Baronet had placed much reliance was, the enormous transactions Of the Bank of England. The Right Hon. Baronet had told the llouse that the eireulat'on of the Bank of Eng land was at present 25,000,0001. ; and that notwith- standing there had only been two prosecutions at the last Assizes for forgeries up ►n it. Now he (Mr. F. Buxton) did not quarrel with the facts which the Right Hon. Baronet had stated ; he only quarrelled with the inference which the Right Hon. Baronet deduced front them. The Right Hon. Baronet had said, that these facts proved that the system had worked well,—that the law was operative for good,—and that property had no other protectio❑ except the severity of the law. Now he would admit that if the severity of the law had been operative in the manner in which the Right Hon. Baronet described, his argument was successful; but if he (Mr. F. Buxton) could show that this rarity of clime arose from another cause, then cadebat qucestio,—there was an end to the Right Hon. Baronet's argument. Now if the system were operative at all, it must he operative at all times,—it must have been as operative,ten years ago, when the small notes of the Bank of England were in circulation, as it was now when they were withdrawn from it by Act of Par liament. But was the punishment of death operative as a check upon the forgery of small notes at the former of these two periods ? Nothing less so. This curious fact was left on record, uncontradieted, and incapable of con tradiction, that in the course of the year 1817, 31,180 small notes of the Bank of England were presented at its counter, and &eared to be forgeries.—(Hear, hear.) Was it not a decisive proof that the severity of the law rendered tke law itself inoperative, when so many as 31,180 capital crimes were committed within a year, and nearly all with impunity?—(Hear, hear.) He contended upon these daft, that the property of the Bank of Eng land had been protected, not by the severe and rigid enact ments of the law, but by the withdrawal 01 . its small notes from circulation.—(Hear.) They were in the habit o: hearing but too often of the chances of escape which cri• minals had from the hands of justice. Those chances were generally stated in vague, indefinite, and conjectural terms —for nobody knew the premises on which they ought to be calculated. But in the case of forgery the grounds of the calculation were unfortunately afforded them. In the year 1817, the total number of forgeries on the Bank of England were 31,180. Out of ibis number there were prosecuted 142 ; convicted, 62 ; and executed, 14. —( Hear. ) So that, in that instance, after the House had exhibited all the terrors and all the severity of the law, it was 200 to 1 that a person who had committed forgery would not be prosecuted ; 500 to I that he would not be convicted ; and 2,000 to 1 that he would not be executed.—(Hear, hear.) It was this severity of law, producing as a neces sary consequence the uncertainty of its being carried into execution, that produced this immense mass of crime and forgery.—(Hear.) There was another fact which he wished to bring before the notice of the House, which was most conclusive upon the point, and which banished from his mind all doubt as to the expediency of altering the existing law. What was the point at issue between the Right Hon. Baronet and him ? Was it not simply this-- are crimes against prop e i ty better repressed by ' laws of great severity, or by penalties mild, just, and proportionate to the offence?—(Hear, hear.) He abstained from say ing any thing on the present occasion as to the right of inflicting the punishment of death for crimes committed against property, though he did not mean to disguise from the House that he felt strongly, very strongly upon that point. He agreed with the eloquent language of the peti tion which he had that night bad the honour of present ing to the Hous,:—" that the Lord and Giver of life had not invested monarchs, however powerful, with unlimited discretion over the lives of men for any oflenres which they might think fit to declare capital, hut that their competency of legislating upon human life was limited by the natural and revealed law of God."—(Hear.) He did not intend to appeal to the feelings of humanity on this point, he left those feelings for the present quite out of his consideration. He took it for granted that property must be guarded at all hazards. That being the case, the only question was whether a system of unqualified rigour or of mitigated severity, was most efficient in repressing crime and protecting property. There was a fact decisive of that question, to which be wished to call the particular attention of the House. Some years ago they made two experiments in criminal legislation, which completely settled the question. In one of them they had taken a crime which had formerly been punished slightly, and made it a capital felony; and in the other they had mitigated the punishment of Is crime which had formerly been death, and for which crime a person had been exe cuted only the very year before. The point for the House to consid e r was, the effect of these two changes. The first alteration was made for the protection of the Excise. Formerly the forgers , cf certain stamps of the Excise was punished by fine and imprisonment ; the House made it a capital felony. To learn the effects of the alteration, the Committee which sat on the Criminal Laws in 1819, summoned before it the Solicitor of the Excise, the late Mr. Carr. Nothing could be fairer than to ask of that gentleman the effect of a measure which originated from the Government which he served, and which came par ticularly under the notice of the department in which he was employed. He told the Committee that increasing the rigour of penal laws was, in all cases which had come under his experience, a change for the worse; that the revenue was better protected by means of leniby than by measures of rigour; and that he had observed that in all cases where the revenue was attempted to be secured by making the breaches of its laws capital crimes, it was the fraudulent trader who was protected, and not the revenue. Another experiment tried at the same time was this : The linen-bleachers of England and Ireland came to Par liament in 1811. and stated that their property was sub jrct to depredation, because the parties were not prose cuted, and therefore they prayed an alteration of the law. This was granted; and now what was the effect ? It was difficult to say what had beeri the effect in England, be cause larcenies of that description were mingled with the others ; but he had understood from the provincial registers that the crime had not increased. He had, however, for tunately obtained, within a day or two, a return from the linen-bleachers of Ireland, in two counties in the province of Ulster, from 1800 to 1829, from whence it appeared, that in t'••e first Ave years the !limber of persons com mit-4d fir the cr'ine when it was a capital offence was, sixty-one; in the last five years, when the offence was transportable, the number of persons committed wa , thirty-seven only; so that although in the latter period the number of offences generally had increased ; this offence had decreased. But the most curious point in the return was the number of convictions. Of the sixty- one persons committed in the first period, only three were convictezl, and 5S e , icapel ; whereas during the latter years, out of 37 committals, 17 were convicted.—(Hear,) —Here, then, the experiment had been completely suc cessful; and the circumstances of the linen-bleachers of Ireland were the same as those of the bankers of England. Both stated that their property was exposill to depredation, which they ascribed to the severity of the law. The question then was, why the House should not grant to the bankers of England, who made the same request as the linen bleachers of Ireland, what they claimed. The petition of the bankers,of England had been read before to the House; but this petition, signed by 1,000 bankers, was so im portant that he could not refrain from qucting a passage of it i—" Your petitioners find by experience, that the pe nalty of death prevents the punishment of crime, and in jures the property it was intended to protect." The Ilon. Member then proceeded to state, that he bad rec-ived a variety of letters from bankers throughout the country, which he had intended to read, but they were too nume rous. All complained that tile Right Hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir R. Peel) had not gone far enough ; that he . _ ;ould not be acquainted with the situation of bankers in he country; that forgeries were committed on them with impunity, for those who were forged upon would not pro secute ; whereas, if the penalty were less than death, no _ . consideration of trouble, of expense, or of inconvenience, would prevent them from prosecuting to conviction. One of them said, " I know of innumerable cases in which parties have refused to prosecute," so that nothing sur prised him (Mr. Buxton) more than to see, notwithstand ing this repugnance, the number of prosecutions. Many of the p trties to wh , m be referred complained of the lan guage he had used on a former occasion, and that be had appeared to give his approbation to the course which had been pursued by the Right Hon. Secretary. lie (Mr. Buxton) gave it as he felt it. The Right lion. Gentle man had been a very active reformer of the criminal law, and had cleared our statute book of a mass of ancient rub bish. In one of his speeches the Right Honourable Gentleman had described our criminal law as the most s inguinary in the world ; and be had observed, " I have been the instrument in many cases of miti gating the severity of the law, and I can assure the House that in no instance has any obstruction of justice arisen from such mitigation." He (Mr. Buxton) admitted that the Right Hon. Gentleman's speech and his Bill were at variance, as appeared evident to himself, for he bad made an apology for not going further, by saying that the public were not yet ripe for the improvement. But the public were now fully ripe; the bankers had come forward and said, " Give us the protection which would result from a milder law." Then he hoped that the Right Hon. Gen tleman would Consent to the reformation of his own Bill, and would raise it to what be (Mr. Buxton) believed to be his own principle, ae well as to what had been asked by the bankers of the country. Mr. LENNARD was acquainted with many bankers, . _ and bad received many letters, all agreeing in the senti ments contained in the letters referred to by the lion. Member (Mr. Buxton). There was one case of a banker who had been often forged upon, and he had paid the bib out of his own pocket, rather than suffer the offenders to be prosecuted. In another case, a banker had been forged upon 20 or 30 times, by the same individual, but in con sequence of the severity of the law, he had refused to take any measures against him. There never was a case more completely made out than the unwillingness of the public that this severe law should continue in force. The feeling lend been entirely on one side, for whilst the table had been loaded with petitions against the continuance of the existing law, not a single petition bad been presented in its favour. The expression had not been confined to any particular class; it had proceeded from every class; and if Honourable Members would take a map of England, he would defy them to put their finger upon any place from which a petition had not come. The public feeling was even stronger than had been expressed. Many per , sons engaged in trade had abstained from avowing their sentiments, for fear that the knowledge of their unwilling ness to prosecute would leave their property without any protection. An attorney in the country had informed him that he had several clients who had been forged upon, who refused to prosecute; but they declined appearing as peti tioners to the House, lest they might expose their property to depredation. With respect to the Bill, he admitted that it had some merit as being a good digest of the law of forgery ; but as . a practical mitigation of that law, it was of no value whatever. It was only necessary to look into other countries—France, for instance : hardly any instance took place there of the punishment of death for the crime, Let a forged Bank of England note be passed in France, the utmost punishment would be branding. and the gallies for five years. But if a forged note of France be uttered here we put the criminal to death. Might it not be bet ter to try the system in the latter country ? Forgery was only a species of robbery, and to punish it with such seve rity, was to confound the distinctions of guilt. The doc trine he held was no novelty : it was inculcated in one of our oldest statutes—a statute of Henry VIII. Some allusion had been made on a former night to the expence of prosecutions. Let the Right Hon. Gentleman appoint a public prosecutor, or adopt any other expedient to ob viate the evil; but unless it were accompanied by some mi tigation of the criminal law,hie reform would not be effectual. The SOLICITOR-GENERAL began by complaining th_t the Hon. Member for Weymouth had strained facts and made exaggerated statements not warranted by the facts. Every man, both in the House and out of it, must be so anxious not to impose the slightest unnecessary punishment, that it seemed invidious for a person to advo cate the continuance of the law as it stood. It might be imagined that his Right Hon. Friend had proposed to ex tend the punishment of forgery, instead of diminishing it. If he had come down and taken away the capital punish ment for any such an offence, that would have been treated as a great boon ; but as the Bill was a consolidation of the laws regarding forgery, it seemed to be regarded as an in crease of the punishment. But he would call the atten tion of the House to one clause in the Bill, which abolished capital punishment for forging deeds. He (the Solicitor- General) had thought this a dangerous alteration ; but his Right Hon. Friend thought otherwise, and had inserted the claus t. Advocating the law as it stood, he (the Soli citor-General) had the satisfaction of thanking that he was deterring persons from the commission of crime, and doing what was just and right, in protecting the property of those en whom forgery was committed. We should not reserve all our tenderness for the offender ; some should be shown towards those who suffered from their crime. The number of persons committing the offence went a long way to justify the law. These persons were always of some education, and they calculated the probability of escaping with impunity. They were persons deeply in our confi dence, and familiar with our habits of business and mode of writing. Looking, therefore, at the description of per sons who committed the offence, atthe means and opportu nities they had, if the punishment of death was justifiable by the laws of God and man, it was justifiable in reference to this crime. There were some of those who opposed the application of this punishment to forgery, who were op posed to capital punishment altogether. There could be no doubt, that that respectable body, the Quakers, had set - their mind upon doing away with the penalty of death for forgery ; but they were prepared for abolishing it in every other offence. Was the country prepared for this ? Was it prepared to bring our criminal code down to the level of the opinions of that respectable body? Was it a reason because they had prejudices upon this point, therefore the people were to have this protection taken from theta ? As to the petitions being all on one side, the reason was that all the activity had been on one side, and none on the other. All this activity had been from the Quakers; but the opinions held by that respectable body on this subject, he could not hold. He must say that he thought the appal ling punishment of death, executed as it was with so much ignominy in the public streets, where criminals were sus pended before a gazing populace, was greatly calculated to deter men from the commission of crime. Ile had not, however, understood his Right Hon. Friend to bind him self nut to extend the lesser punishment to other cases than were included in this Bill; all that he had understood his Right Hon. Friend to say was, that they must proceed with caution. He saw no secondary punishment which could be expected to act so strongly for the prevention of crime as the greater punishment. His Hon. and Learned Friend (Mr. Brougham) opposite had said, that out of 117 convictions, the punishment of death had been inflicted only in 24 cases ; but he did not think that the argument his Learned Friend had drawn from this was a legitimate one; for, although the secondary punishment was here inflicted .upon so many, and the capital punishment on so few, yet the terror of the greater punishment hung over all. He did not t hi n k t h at , a l t h oug h t h e c h ance s might be nine or ten to one against a man being hanged, the man would have the less terror of that punishment. It was the greatest of all punishments, and the uncertainty attending the infliction of it did not lessen the fear of it, much less could the chances of nine or ten to one have that effect. From the conduct of the present Govern ment there ought to result the greatest confidence that the utmost penalty of the law would only be carried into effect in cases which required it. If they took . a secondary punishment, it must be the maximum of punishment, and then they would find it necessary to relax again ; for few men would agree that in every c tse the maximum to . ititat?ver that maximum might be, should b, inflicted. They hal now secondary punishments for cases which required siich punishments, and they hid also the penalty of death for extreme cases. If they were to miti- gate the law, as now proposed, they would still have to con tend with public sympathy, and as there were now persons too conscientious to prosecute, because the penalty of the offence might be death, so they would have others re fuse to prosecute because the punishment might still be greater than, in their opinion, the offence deserved. Fo , his own part, he should not now, and much less if th( punishment were mitigated, have any hesitation in pro secuting for such an offence, yet they had seen that others were actuated by a different feeling. Such were th.- Quakers and other conscientious persons who could not bring themselves to prosecute for cases to which the penalty of death was attached ; but, as he had before observed, it was impossible to tell how far the scruples of persons might he carried, even though other punishments should be sub stituted for that of death. Mr. MACAULEY said that on a farmer occasion the Right Hon. Secretary had assured them that he did not consider it to be a question on which the supporters of Government were expected to vote in favour of the Bill. If this assurance were sincerely given, he must sly that the decision of the former evening was a matter of astonish ment to him, for he thought the question must have pre vailed if it bad been left to stand or fall by its own merits. To-night, however, that assurance would be put to the test ; and if the question were lost, he confessed that he should find it very difficult to believe that ministerial in fluence had not contributed to the defeat. In advocating the mitigation of this part of our criminal code, be heiged leave to say that he proceeded not upon considerations of humanity, and that he did not participate in that con- scientious feeling which prevented some persons from consenting to the infliction of the punishment of death. But while he disclaimed this compassionate sentimentality, allow him to say, that it was far more creditable than the vindictive sentimentality of the Learned Solicitor-General, who had condemned even some of the mitigations of punishment c , nt .ined in the Bill of the Right Hon. Secretary.—( Hear, hear.)—The vote he should that night give would be founded upon the conviction, that if they meant the law to be executed they must mitigate the severity of it. They could not punish forgery with death, and it was vain for them to flatter themselves that they could. They might bring in a paper called a Bill ; they might read it three times ; they might send it up to the Lords, who might agree to it, and read it three times also ; it might receive the Royal Assent ; it might be sent to the King's printer, and be placed among the rest of the statutes—and then they might say that they had made a law which would punish forgery with death. But if they said so, they deceived themselves. —for they would only have added another to the number of those pages in our statute book which were the scorn of criminals and the disgust of sober mett,—mere abortions of laws, which were dead before they were born. To make it a law they must get it acted upon ; but this, it had been seen, was beyond their power. In first place, men would not prostcute. It had been said th‘t the Bank of England always prosecuted, and doubtless that MS true ; but then the Bank was a corporation, and Lord Coke told them that a corporation had no soul. The question was, would individual members of society prosecute? Expe rience had shown that they could not. The Right Hon. Secretary, indeed, had said that the B ink prosecutions were a fair measure of the number of prosecutions gene ' rally, but as it appeared to him, the contrary was true ; for the Bank prosecuted in every case, and for this very reason, therefore, its prosecutions could not be taken as a fair measure of the whole. The Right Hon. Secretary had admitted that a disinclination to prosecute did exist, and while the Right Hon. Gentleman gave to some the credit of acting upon conscientious feelings, he said that many were hypocrites, and that they made their con- sciences a stalk ing-horse to cover their real motives, which were to save the expenses of a prosecution. Now this, instead of being an argument against the mitigation of punishment, appeared to him to constitute of itself one of the great abuses of the present system ; it gave people an excuse which was universally admitted to be good in the ease of forgery, but which would be at once laughed at if it were put forward in cases of arson or murder; and if there were as much of this counterfeit coin abroad as the Right lion. Gentleman supposed there was, it was a proof that much sterling. currency must exist, or the former could never circulate.—( Hear, hear.) But, suppose they got a prosecutor, then the case went before the grand jury, where bills, though supported by the clearest evidence, were constantly thrown out. It was only the other day that Mr. Holder said this repeatedly occurred. However, let the grand jury find a true bill, then it went down to court with the names of reluct int witnesses on its back, and what reception it met with in its next stage .he need hardly remind the House. By the last papers connected with this subject, which had been laid uFon the table, it appeared that during the nine years ending 1828, there had been 708 persons committed on the capital charge of forgery, and that, out of these, no less than 344 had got off before before the Grand Jury ; while, out of 558, who had been committed on the minor charge, not capital, only 57 had got off before the Grand Jury.—( clear.) The Learned Solicitor-General had toll them that, with regard to the punishment of death, the diminution of the chances did not diminish the fear ; but allow him to tell the Learned Gentleman that the chance even of deaen might be reduced so low that the fear of death would have very little weight. Besides, men saw these chances differently ; for instance, there was scarcely a gentleman in Westminster-hall who would not refuse to go out as a Judge to Bombay, and a man who could not muster up courage enough to fight a dual would forge you half a dozen acceptances in no time. —(Hear, and laughter.) Yet the climate of Bombay had been fatal to very many, and there was more danger in forging than in fighting duels. But the objection to the law was, as he had bef , re stated, that it could not be executed. The Judges, the Juries, the witnesses, aye, and even the Secretary of State too, were against it ; for whatever ground the Secretary of State might take in that House, it hail been shown that only one-ninth of the per sons convicted had been executed.—(Hear, hear.) And yet this was an argument in favour of the existing law, both with the Right Hon. Gentleman and with the Learned Solicitor-General.—( Hear.) The latter too thought that the ignominy of the punishment was not without most salutary effects ; but when the drop fell, amidst cries of " shame" and " murder" all horror of the crime, all dread of the punishment, was lost in disgust at the exhibition. To show to what extent this sympathy was carried, let him remind the House that, in the case of Mr. Fauntleroy, the case which was so often quoted against them, a petition, praying that the life of that man might be spared, was signed by no less than 6,000 persons. Now the case of Mr. Fauntleroy was, one would imagine, the strongest possible. The sympathy that it excited was, therefore, the more remarkable evidence of the opinions of the people with regard to capital punish ments for forgery. Whatever punishment the offerces of Mr. Fauntleroy might have been thought to have deserved —(same might think that he deserved to be put to torture, or to be roasted by a slow fire, or to be broken on the wheel, and left to die of thirst)—yet that was not the way in which legislators ought to look at crime. The opinion of the people ought to regulate the measure of punishment. See what that opinion was, and to what measure it carried men. Juries and witnesses constantly acted in violation of the oath they had taken. He did not mean to say that such juries and such witnesses were not guilty of a great moral offence ; but was he, while he admitted this, to ac quit those fiotn whom the offence came? He would not defend this conduct in juries, but, at the same time, far be it from him to defend the constructors of the law. if juries had become legislators in this respect, let the blame of so peat an inconvenience rest on the heads of Ministers, who had forced men to choose between perjury and what they considered to be bloodguiltiness.—(Hear, hear.) — They were teaching the people to look to juries for that laxity which, if it should become common, would he one of the greatest curses that could befall the country—a curse, however ; which they could not avert, if they per sisted in making popular tribunals administer unpopular laws.—(Hear, hear.)—The knowledge and the extent of this evil might be shortly illustrated by an occurrence which took place the other day. In a prosecution of this nature, the Counsel for the Crown rose and intimated to the jury that they need not be afraid of convicting the prisoners, for, though it was a capital offence, yet it was not probable the men would he banged.— i The Counsel on the other side said, and said very pro perly, that his Learned Friend had no right to take such a course with the jury. This occurrence showed the state to which things had arrived ; the feeling of juries on these subjects were notorious, as indeed, how could it be other wise, when they, answerable to no one, had so fre quently proved that they would commit perjury and be come legislators themselves rather than do the bloody drudgery which . these who alone ought to legislate, thought fit to put upon them? Of this feeling it might be said, as the old ellytnists said of water, that it is incom. , pressible ; they might multiply restraints upon restraints, . but still it would have vent, it would burst through every . crevice, and ooze out at every pore.--(Hear, hear.)—The ancient principle of legislation, which experience had proved to be utterly fallacious, was, that the more severe he law, the more effective it. would By acting on his principle they had made the people combine to cheat he Custom-house, and they were now making juries com jine to cheat the gallows. This House often found thorn- Ayes situated with respect to the upper House, as they rnv found themselves situated with respect to their con. ,tituent.. They passed a Bill, and sent it up to the Lords, vhere amendments were made which were not liked by hose with whom the Bill originated; but the Bill, with i , s amendments, was accepted, because euch an act was n•eferable to none at all, or such alteration better than the , xisting law. Let them pursue the same course on e:c. 'resent occasion towards their constituents, whose voice .vas quite as powerful, though not so efficiently expressed, s the voice of the Lords. Their constituents had sent , a ek to them the law which had been passed on this sub j,,ct ; they had now a favourable opportuttity of re-con idering it, and he did implore the House—snot on consi lerations of humanity, but as they value that commerce, the protection of which they professd to have so mach at heart—to remove from the statute books those enactments) vhich were a disgust to those who did WA and a laugh ng-stock to those who did ill.—(Cheers.) Mr. CRIPPS said, that he perfectly concurred with hese who looked upon this question as one stripped of tcli party and political considerations. For his own patt 110 considered it purely on its own merits. He had pre sented three petitions from his constituents against the Bill of the Right Hon. Secretary ; but he had told his •onstituents that his own opinion did not coincide with theirs. In opposing the views of his constituents Le knew that he ran a very great risk, and particularly at this time—(Hear, and laughter)—but he thought that ill who knew him would acquit him of giving his vote in this occasion, because he wished to support the Go vernment. He gave his word and honour that he did not vote for the Bill, because he wished to support Ministers, nut really and honestly because be thought it necessary to retain this punishment. He had examined the Right lion Home Secretary's Bill, and the Right Hon. Mem !)er for Knaresborough's clause, with his best attention, ind the result at which he arrived was, that the Bill sof, ficiently discriminated between those cases to which the extreme penalty of the law should or should not apply, and that the cause provided no valid subitifitte for the punishment of death in the rnOrtaggravated cases of for gery. He therefore should'vote' for the Bill, whieb in deed he thought more decidedly based on principles of cle , mency than the proposition for'commuting punishment of death to 14 years' transportation, with a tirellous long solitary confinement. Sir C. WETHERELL was one of those who should vote for the Right Hon. Home Secretary's Bill without the fear of the imputation of being enrolled among those who. it had been said, were biassed in their votes by the political influence of the Right Hon. Gentleman. Such an imputation was most unfounded, he would say, when the conscientious characters of many of those who had voted on a former occasion, and probably would vote that evening with the Right Hon. Gentleman, was taken into consideration. That Bill was in the spirit of incederate reform, which characterised the several improvement's ire our laws, of which the Right Hon. Home Secretary v(64 the official instrument, and as such was entitled to the support of every Hon. Member who had voted for those improvements. He was aware that many of those who were most eager to see his Right Hon. Friend's clatit.o adopted professed to set little value on the measures for the improvementof the administration of justice to which he had just alluded, on the ground that they did not go far enough. The Hon. Member for Weymouth (Mr. F. Buxton), for example, seemed to =Raider them to' be nothing more than a kind of small beer reform—(Lauglx t?r)—and that nothing had been done since the punish ment of death was inflictable for other crimes than mnr.. der, for such, in fact, would be the effect of his Right Hon. Friend's clause, if adopted. Now this was a sub ject on which he had bestowed more than ordinary consi deration. He knew that many, he was free to admit, conscientious, theoretical sentimentalists, had maintained that because in Revelation punishment of death was not declared against any crime but murder, that therefore 'it would be immoral, illegal, and irreligious, to infliet it for robbery, or any modifiratiou of the crime of property spo liation. But such was not, however, the opinion of Paley, or Kippis, or Blackstone, or other high authorities in the ethics of jurisprudence. They maintained, in his mind soundly, that it did not follow, that because death -was not enjoined in the Scriptures as the punishuient of any crime except murder, that therefore its being extended in the pro,ress of society to other offences was not consonant nor congruous with the Divine Law. For what would be the consequence of f4ilowing up the theoretical principles of the class of sentimentalists to their legitimate and li;gically consistent extent, unless to disarm Government of its powers, by doing away with all the principles and institu tions of Criminal Law?—(" No !")—He said yes; 'far did not the class to which he alluded not only maintain that punishment by death was immoral, illegal, and 'irreligious, but also maintain, and, what was more, acted upon, the principle that all litigation was unrighteous 7-4" No, no," from Dr. Lushington.)—He repeated, notwithstand. ing the civilian " No," which had reached his ear, that class of sentimentalists to which he had referred, did main tain and act upon those principles, and therefore could not, in consistency, he content till there sewed to be any pu nishment at all. When did the lion. and Learned Ci vilian see a Quaker a suitor in Doctors' Commons, or its any of the courts of common law ? But, to return to his Right Hon. Friend's clause. He felt in relation to that clause precisely as the Hon, Member for Callington had on a former occasion dem ibed himself to feel—that is, ho would willingly support its adoption, were it first made clear to him that it provided a bona fide substitute for the punishment of death. But it did no such thing ; and while it went to take away every existing scheme of ven geance which the present law sanctioned, it left no substi tute in its stead. What did the clause propose ? Why, that the crime of forgery should be punished—instead of by hanging in any case—either by fourteen years' solitary confinement, or by fourteen yearsj transportation, or by both, according to circumstances. With respect to the first of these propositions, it appeared to him a sufficient answer to repeat what had been said en a former occasion. It was no punishment at all in care of large forgery spoliations, for whet was there to prevent the convict criminal from carrying out with him the money in gold which he had defrauded some person of, and thus rendering punishment by transporation a perfect mockery of legal revenge?—(Hear.)—Then with respect to the 14 years' solitary confinement proposition, he should like to know whether public 'feeling, of which so much had been said, as being scared by the spectacle of execu tion% for forgery, would not be still more scared by the sight of the misery of the slow, tedious, wearing, energy consuming, punishment of solitary confinement? Would it nut be, in fact, generally felt that that species of pu nishment was actually more severe than the punishment of death? He maintained it was, and that the existing law was far more merciful in its tendency than such a proposition. Then with respect to the third remedy of his Right Hon. Friend—the transportation after solitary confinement—all he should sty was, that every objection to either punishment singly applied a fortiori to their union. What would be its effect? Why, to justly make forgery-criminals the objects of public pity much more than their execution at present. Had • criminal, after his fourteen years' solitary confinement, - with hard tread mill labour, by which it might be thought be had expiated his offence, in fact become an emeritus of his pri son, and therefore unrestrained by its regulations, to be debarred from leaving that prison, and told " now your 14 years' transportation commences?"—(Hear.)-- Punishment of death would be ' much more humane treatment. He knew that the opinion that punishment by death was as impolitic as it was cruel, in offences against property, was daily making-way, was creeping over the face of public opinion.--( Hear.)—Still he was not a convert to it, and be would venture-to say, though not a Quaker; he felt. as warmly and as deeply for the sufferings of his fellow-creatures as any theoretical senti mentalist of them all. But his was no bastard inconsis tent sympathy ; he was for no pseudo morality—no small beer relaxation of the sternness of criminal jurisprudence. —(Hear, and a laugh.) He should like to know from some of the sentimental theorists how they reconciled the consistency of abolishing punishment of death in cases of forgery with their keeping it in force for highway robbery . or spoliation of property ?---(Hear, hear,) Surely if it was objectionable in the one instance, it was at least equally so in the other cue. If they believed their prin ciple to be good, they should, in consistency, extend it to all offences against property besides. forgery. Indeed, he thought forgery in nine cases out of ten to be a much more aggravated crime than the majority of robbery cases that called down the severity of the law; for the 'former was a deliberate, concerted violation 'of the law, by persons gene rally of education and less pressed by want of the:necessi ties of nature, while the latter were too often the pro re ;iota offspring of want or drunkenness, or the influence of abd associates. The Hon. and Learned Gentleman pro ceeded to argue, in answer to the Hon. Member for Caine that there were two classes of forget, criminals—that in which there was a breach. or trunt,' and that in which there was no such breach—between whom the Bill before the House drew. a proper line of distinction. The Hors. Member had alluded to the case of Fattutleroy, and had ad - mitted that not only - it was not too severely punished. but that ingenuity might, - bethought, be exercised in devising some fitting torture for that lAA criminal.. New was it