The Sun. — London, England, 1830-05-25 00:00:00

...__.#1....'" ion cut t of een concluded by repeating his_ former declarations, that he protested against the receptiOn of unauthorised memoranda of conversations in the diicussion of a question of this kind, for the purpose of establishing a claim to a defensive alliance; which never was contemplated by any Member of the Government of this country. Sir R. WILSON intimated an opinion it was only in Match last that Mexico reseived permission to invade Cuba. Sir R. PEEL repeated that they knew they were at iiberty to do so throughout the whole period, and that in 1 826 they showed a disposition to act on that opinion. Sonae stress had been laid on the supposition that Mr. Canning advised the Mexicans not to invade Cuba. He denied that Mr. Canning did so; but if he had, he (Sir It Peel) was prepai•ed to contend, that at the time when Mr. Canning was endeavouring to prevail on Spain to re "guise these States, he had a perfect right to advise the Mexicans to abtain from offending Spain by an attack on Cuba. Mr. HUSKISSON saw no inconsistency between the statements of his Right Hon. Friend and the documents Produced by the Gallant General, although they proved to demonstration that Mexico and Colombia, in deference to the feelings and wishes of Great Britain, had abstained from the course she had previously determined to pursue. He would be one of the last to say, however, that the deference then paid to the wishes of this country bound it to any defensive alliance. God forbid that he should argue anything of the - kind. All he wished to impress on the House and the Government was, that the conduct of Mexico at that time gaveher a claim now on our interference to put an end to a state of things prejudicial to the Prosperity of Mexico, and of all the States of Europe. By that interference at the present moment we would con fer a benefit on commerce, on humanity, and Even on Spain herself. UPP The House then ' S went into aLY. A. GRA NT - i n t h e Chair. Committee of Supply. Sir Resolutions, granting 8,000/. for the iefirge to the desti tute, 4,000/. for the American loyalists, and 8,339/. for criminal lunatics, were then agreed to. On the resolution that 5,712/. be granted for French refugees, for Protestant Dissenting Clergymen, &c., Mr. HUME begged to ask in what manner the sum of 1 ,695/. was disposed of to the Dissenting Clergymen. The sum was so small that it could do good to a very few, and 'he feared it brought benefit merely to those who dis tributed it. Mr. DAWSON replied, that many of the persons in question were in great distress, and that the money was distributed among them with the utmost impartiality by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor. Mr. HUME was of opinion that the payments might be gradually discontinued. - The resolution was then agreed to; as were also reso lutions for granting 45,000/. for his Majesty's foreign and other secret services, and 76,000/. to defray the expence of printing Acts of Parliaments, and Bills, reports, and other papers, for the two Houses of Parliament. On the resolution for granting the sum of 8,000/. to defray the expence for printing under the direction of the Commissioners on public records, Mr. PROTIIEROE expressed his hope that a new Commission, composed of men of diligence, and who had a tot e for the subject, would be appointed. The resolution was then agreed to. On the resolution for granting 96,850/. for providing stationery, printing, and binding, for the several Public Departments of Government, including the expence of the establishment of the Stationery Office, Mr. HUME said, that there were many objectionable items in this grant. There was the Royal Military Asy lumns, 295/. ; the C ommander-in -Chief's Office, 225/. Then there was the Army Medical Board, 7001. while the Adjutant General's Office was only 380/. There was also 1201, for the Insolvent Debtors' Court—the only Court that was allowed the expence of stationery. All these sub jects demanded inquiry. After some further conversation, the resolution was agreed to ; and the House having resumed, the Report was ordered to be received on Wednesday. In answer to a question from Mr. GORDON, the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (as ;we under stood the Right Hon. Gentleman) intimated his intention of proceeding with the Supply on Friday se'nnight, REGISTRAR AT MADRAS BILL. Sir .1. MACINTOSH, before he made his motion on the subject of hie Forgery Bill, wished to postpone the se cond reading of the Registrar at Madras Bill. Ile would he Most happy to bring it on at any hour on Friday se'n- I ' ti ght, if he might be permitted to do so. FORGERIES' PUNISHMENT RILL. 11 Sir R. PEE L, adverting to the intended motion of the 011 . and Learned Gentleman, for an instruction to the e mroaittee on the y Forgeries' Punishment Bill that they should have power to reduce the standard of capital punish roent at p resent i mposed by the Bill, suggested that it might 1) 4 preferable course a more to ove an am e nd ment t o that effect in the Cominittee. Sir J. MACIN TOSH thought that it would be better to move the instruction to the Committee. Mr.SPEAKER said, that when instructions were given to a Committee, it was g.-nerally to do that which they would not have the power to do without those instructions —but the instruction which the Hon. and Learned Gentle man-wished to move was to do what the Committee, had the power to do without such instruction, and therefore would restrain their power, as showing the prior judgment and opinion of the House. Sir J. MACINTOSH bowed to the opinion of the Chair. The only object which he had in wishing to move the instruction to the Committee, was to give full and fair notic e on that sole point on which any important difference as likely acid Was course, to Occur . ' He would now, how e v er , re li nqu i s h ouse should out would move an amendment as soon as the A go into th e C omm it tee on t h e Bill . fixedlr. P. T HOMSON wished some expre s s d a y cou ld b e Th for proceeding with the Registrar at Mdr Bill. e Co mpany were put to a great expense by the d lay. Sir J. MACINTOSH was most anxious to proceed with it. He appealed to the recollection of his lion Friend whether he had not been an importunate beggar to the House f or th e opportunity of proceeding with it. The ~ delay was as inconvenient to the other parties concerned as it could possibly be to the Company. On the m o ti on of Sir R. PEEL, the House then went into a Committee upon the Forgery Bill. On thereading of the clause, declaring that the forgery of Exchequer Bills, Bank Notes, Orders for the Payment of Money, &c., should be pimished capitally. Sir J. MACINTOSH said that he should, according t ° the suggestion of the Ch a i rman , proceed to act in that Committee as he should have done with respect to the in struction lie was about to move in the House itself; and as there had yet been no full debate upon this great urea "re, he hoped the Committee would excuse him, if he considered himself in the same situation, now that they Were in Committee, as he should have considered himself t f he had b roug h t on t hi s d i scussion upon the motion for he second reading. In making the observations that oc curred to him upon this subject, he should confine him • self, as narrowly as possible, within the limits of the ques tion before the Committee ; but at the same time lie must declare, that it was impossible to consider that question, Without consid er i ng t h e general principles of legislation, and especially those principles of legislation which were more peculiar to this moat important class of offences. It Was needless for him to enter into the history of the various Parliamentary controversies in which, since the time of that great man, Sir Samuel Romilly, within the last b t wenty years from that time to the present, they had often een en gage"l. He could not compare —or, rather, be could not contrast the temper and opinions of these two periods—without a strong feeling of exultation, which he had no language adequate to convey as powerfully as he was affected by it to the House. He remembered reading of those times when the most ancient, the most barbarous punish:news were resorted to without reprobation, and when even the lifeless remains of those who had been no worse than adventurers in the troubled sea of politics were exposed to the perpetration of every horribl e indignity ; w het: eweln, Prince of W a l es , an d W allace, of Scotland, were insulted irr this m anner, b ecause they had been noble enough to I t sPd up bravely in defence of the liberties of their country. 9lle recollected the time too when the most respectable rar acters in th e country, both as Statesmen and as Lawyers, were against that for which he now asked, and W ould have contended as boldly for the preservation of the old and barbarous modes of punishments, of these worthless remnants of barbarous times, as for that of Magna Charts and the Bill of Rights. Yet, lie was happy to say, he i h ad li ve d to see the day when these opinions were changed, n od when the Minister of the Crown came forward to state that he was desirous of mitigating the severity of capital punishment as far as the general safety would per suit The obj ect o f a I punishment was to protect the life dolle prop erty of all at the expence of the least possible degree the of suff er i ng to any Of the mem b ers o f soc i ety . S uc h was n ., . • • and str un I vading opinio n o f t h e men of the present day, gIY did past peri o d s , it contrast w i t h t h e opposing temper of How different were the modes of thinking i n the barbarous times of Edwar d 1., when severity wa; I universally ad o pt e d , and in these i civilized periods in which we saw Mi n i sters and Statesmennre t asserting their title to glory by thei r disposition to assist inMitigatin. the old severity of th e law. ' c Prise a j uvent aliis at eg o nunc denique jurabo natum." When he considered the small be g innings with which that intrepid, that wise and mag nanimous man, Sir Samuel Romilly, entered en his career of legal reform—and when he recollected that at the distance of between ten and twenty years from the death of thlt noble-minded man, the Bar of the House was crowded with petitioners, who entreated the House not to be satisfied with the propositions of a liberal and reforming Ministry, for that the people were ripe for better things, and were desirous of them— he almost thought that he lived in two different countries, and conversed with people who spoke two different languages. It was needless for him to express his grati.. tulle to the Right Hon. Gentleman, or his admiration of the conduct that Right Hon. Gentleman had pursued ; he had achieved by his reforms, and by his plan for further reform, a title to fame, which no transient measure of political skill, however splendid or dazzling, could ever confer ; he had placed his name among the law-givers who had reformed the Penal code, and who had there fore been among the most signal benefactors of mankind. He bestowed not these praises grudgingly or reluctantly— they came from his heart, and he trusted they would he So considered.—(Hear, hear.)—He now begged to call the attention of the Committee to that which was of such great importance to the petitions. He was well aware, from the twenty years' experience he had acquired in that House, that the words of petitions were not always so important as they sounded, but in the present case, there was no qualification, whether with regard to the charac ter of the petitioners, or the society they constituted, that was wanting to give them claim to the highest degree of importance. Their interest—their supposed interest— their long-believed interest—that which had long been their cherished and guarded interest and right, they now freely gave up--they begged it might be taken from them ; and ' when they appeared at the Bar of the House with such a request, he certainly did conceive that they came there under circumstances different from those of most other Petitioners. He had had the honour of presenting the petition of the inhabitants of Edinburgh—of a large body of the Clergy—and of all- the Protestant Professors of the University. There was a fact of considerable im portance with respect to the meeting at which that petition was agreed to. A gentleman of high talent and character was urged to take the chair at that meeting, and he de clined to do so because the petition did not go far enough, as it did not pray for the abolition of the punishment of death in all cases of murder and murderous attempts.— It was such a fact, connected too with the language of the petition, that showed the House was behind the country— not the country behind the House, in the progress of ex tended and liberal notions on this subject. To the Edin burgh petition there were attached the names of seventeen out of eighteen bankers in a city in which the principal trade was banking, and these petitioners, like all the rest, prayed the House to deliver them from the pretended pro tection—but the real danger, of capital punishment. His Hon. and Learned Friend and Colleague, who was not now in his place, had presented the petition of 700 bankers in England, who all urged the Parliament to deliver them from those laws against forgery which, from their undue severity, palsied the arm of public justice, afforded security to the forger, and endangered the property of the honest man. There were three sorts of petitioners--he would not undervalue any one of them, but undoubtedly they ought to be received . differently. There were some who complained of grievances affecting only themselves; there were others who complained of matters in which they had a public interest ; but there was a third class, whose peti tions were entitled to the greatest weight, for they came forward to support a great public principle, apparently against their own immediate interest. The bankers of Edinburgh, of Glasgow, and of all the other towns of England, had respectively petitioned, and had com plained of the continuance of that punishment which, while it endangered their property, destroyed the faci lity and ease with which the law ought to be capable of being applied for their protection. The last kind of petitioners were these whom he now called to the Bar of the House as witnesses in his behalf, and that Member of Parliament would be a most hardy man who should venture to dispute the evidence of one thousand such men on such a subject. These persons must form the prosecutors, the witnesses, an.) the jurors, in cases of accusations of forgery, and they must be better acquainted with the sentiments of jurors than any Members of the House. They told the House, as the result of their ex perience, that they believed that the present law was an insumbrance, not a protection. So odious was it to them, that they would not prosecute another, and yet it was to men of that class that the Government affected to say, " we know your interests better than you do yourselves." The Government were in error—they were blundering when they affected to say to such a body of men, that they claimed that which, if granted, would materially in volve their security. The people were too humane for these laws, and if the Legislature did not determine to re-barbarise them, they must give way to the demanded reforms. Among the petitioners were three eminent bill brokers, one of whom had discounted twenty-two milli ons of negotiable paper money, and he understood, that if the three were taken together, they discounted fifty mil lions annually of neguciable securities. It would be a waste of his voice and of their time to make anything more than a bare allusion. to such a fact. His proposition was only to return to the ancient system of our laws, which England only began to deviate from in the 18th century. At that tune a false and exaggerated notion of the value of severity spread over Europe. The first change made in the law was with respect to the crime of forgery. When ever this country had been the object of severe or hos tile remarks among the people of the continental nations, that fact bad been selected against us as a proof that, as blinded worshippers of Mammon, we neither valued blood nor truth, but would sacrifice both without remorse to the preservation of our wealth. Such severity as ours was sought for in vain in the laws of France—in the laws of Holland—in the laws of Prussiain the laws of every country and place in Europe, from Hamburg to Naples, from the north to the south, in none of which had it been found necessary to cement by blood, or to secure negotiable paper by a law of so barbarous a kind. The repeal of this law would be no novelty. The Right Hon. Gerrie mon had alluded to the law of France—he was mist mken in what he had said of it ; the two cases in which for gery was there punishable with death were those of the forrry of the paper of the Treasury, stamped with their stamp, or of the negociahle paper issued by time authority of the Government. From a return male in the year 1828, it appeared that there had been only two cases prosecuted—they were cases in which the prisoners were accused of contreAgon des billets de Banque ; so that in those instances the forgery was of paper, not merely per ' mitted, but authorised by the Government. These were the only two cases of prosecution for that crime which had occurred between the period of promulgating the Code Na poleon and the year 1828. But even these were acquitted, so that whatever was the letter of the law, it was never executed. Those acquittals could be imputed to nothing but a popular prejudice against the laws; for it was im posible to believe that the cases should have been wholly unsupported by proof. In all the cases provided for by the present Bill there was but a small number of forgeries, and yet there were no punishments of hard labour for life ; there were some punish. ments of imprisoment, and others of hard labour for years. France was a country that was not to be blotted out of the book of experience of mankind. We knew it better t'ian any other foreign country, and though the negotiable paper property of France was not so large as that of this country, yet it possessed a-great and flourish ing circulation, which it protected, without the effusion of blood, against those dangers which were supposed likely to fall upon this country if we made this projected ex periment in the laws. In the penal code of France the forgery by u public officer, in his official duty, was punish. able with hard labour for life—a circumstance which showed most strongly the nature of the code. That code was in force in Holland; and from Hamburg to Naples there was not a single country in which paper-money was protected by the punishment of death, except in the Brie tieh dominions. The advocates of capital punishment were bound to show that the most important interests of society would be endangered by the alteration of the pu nishment ; for, to show a mere inconvenience was not sufficient for their purpose. The burden of proof did not lie on the men who argued for the abrogation of these laws, but on those who contended that the evil was so great, there were no other means of preventing it but by capital punishment. Unless that absolute necessity was proved, he contended that all other execution; for the of fence were, in the eye of morality and religion, positive murders. In the year 1826 there was a return of nine persons who had been sentenced to death. No favourable circumstances appeared in their various crimes, but. they all had recourse to the Cour de Cassation in appeals upon technical difficulties, Time delay thus occa,ioned afforded the opportunity of investigating their cases, and they were found innocent, and every one of them was pardoned on the avowed ground of their innocence, without any blame being attached to the Judge, the Jury, or the Government. If, in such a country, and with such Judges as France possessed, these errors were committed, the knowledge of them ought to induce us to avoid inflicting those punish ments which, whenever irrevocably in error, did an ir reparable wrong. A French- gentleman, who had be stowed great attention on this subject, had said that no one at Rome or Naples dare give any assistance to the execution of the laws, for such was public justice in those countries that it did not at all stand well with the public. Whatever tended to produce a schism between the execu tion of the laws and the feelings of the people did great injury. If equal punishment were inflicted on unequal crimes, gross, scandalous, fl Trent, notorious injustice must be the consequence ; and it must be a fault in every system of legislation, if it did not confine the highest penalty to the greatest delinquency. The punishment by imprisonment was divisible—different portions might be applied to different degrees of criminality ; but there was no divisibility in the punishment of death. The feelings of this later age did not allow of the barbarous aggrava tions of death practised by our ancestors, and we hanged alike the sheep-stealer and the parricide. As long, then, as this system of equal visitation for unequal guilt con tinued, we were the authors of the most crying injustice. If our ancestors inflicted more than mere death by adding the cruelty of torture, at least they had the excuse that they thereby obs rued something like a scale of punish ments. He thanked God that that barbarous custom was abolished, and since now it was impossible to in flict more than death for the greatest crimes, our only resource was to inflict less than death for offences of minor aggravation. The various existing and an- • thentic tables showed the difference between a sound and a degenerate administration of criminal law. During the last seven years only twenty-four per sons had been executed for forgery, while the whole number of persons convicted of that crime was 217—50 that every offender knew that there were eight chances of esciee to one of suffering. The result . was widely different in cases of murder : in the last seven years there had been 99 convictions, and no less than 88 execu tions, indicating a perfectly sound state of jurisprudence; for the Crown had exercised its prerogative of mercy only in a few cases—that by their mitigating circumstances well deserved it. In France, with a population of thirty-one millions, in the year 1825, there had been 110 executions ; of those 90 were for murder or murderous offences, and 20 for all other crimes. This indiCated a just execution of the law—an application of the last punishment to a class of offences that naturally required it, and to which it ought to be confined. The population of England and Wales, on the other hand, was twelve millions and a half, and in the year 1825, there were eleven criminals executed for murder and murderous offences, and 39 for all other crimes; hence it was obvious that a great deal more blood was shed by the law in the defence of human property than in the protection of human life.—(Hear, hear.)—lt was an ancient and venerable maxim of religion, and it ought to be so of law, " Whoso spilleth man's blood by man shall his blood be spilled ;" and this maxim was well observed in France, where, with double our population, they had only half our crime. What did he infer ? That that which seemed to afford in this country tes timony of immorality of life, was, in fact, nothing but an impeachment of the wisdom of law.. It would re quire but little trouble and examination to establish that the difference between the two countries in this respect was owing to the difference in the adminis tration of the law, and not to any difference in the disposition to criminality. The execution of the law had undergone some surprising revolutions ; and Sir M. Hale made it a matter of boast that in his time in England , every judgment was executed ; yet 150 years after the death of that great Judge, the multiplication of capital punish ments had produced a directly opposite result ; and Eng land at this moment was distinguished from every other country of Einsipe by the uncertainty of her administration of criminal justice ; the effect had been, lie was ashamed to say, to introduce into the kingdom a system at variance with the first principles of free government--he meant that none of the facts or circumstances on which the life or death of man depends, were ever known to the mere spectators of these public proceedings and solemn trials, which seemed to be decisive of his fate. The life or death of a man in the City of London depended upon the investigation of his conduct by a secret body, unknown to the public, unknown to the criminal, and who might be able, for any thing that could be shown to the contrary, to explain the very fact for which, unexplained, he was borne to execution.—(Hear, hear.) The first question to be asked was, is the primary punishment peculiarly adapted to the offence of forgery? He put it to any man accustomed to watch the springs of human action, whether. he was of opinion that the mere fear of death operated upon forgers ? They were commonly persons of some education, holding a respectable station in society, and who, having got into difficulties by love of ostentation, and an indulgence in prodigality, were determined to make a bold thrown in the game oflife, and to risk all upon a single hazard—gut cito mors, aut victoria laita. The sting of death was not the bare loss of life, but circumstances of dis honour and disgrace attending it. Those who fought so bravely and so frequently in the last war had exposed their lives to greater danger than the most abandoned and reck less criminal, but they had marched into the field without reluctance, encouraged by a sense of duty, and in cited by a love of their country's glory. The boldness with which the peril was incurred might be equal in both cases, though in the one it was the minister of crime, and in the other of the noblest virtue. It was a mistake of lawgivers and tyrants (who sometimes affected to be lawgivers), when they thought they deterred from crime merely by investing the punishment of death with terror. Martyrs and heroes had willingly incurred the penalty, however - dreadful it 'might have been rendered, for Heaven had fixed the bounds beyond which disgrace could not he inflicted. In contem plating the suffering, the mind turned with detestation from the author of the punishment, while it watched with pitying veneration the agonies of the sufferer. The philosophic criminal might even imagine that at least there was some thing dignified in dying well, and that part of the infamy of his punishment would be compensated by the firmness of his endurance. For these reasons be thought the punish ment of death ill adapted to, the crime of forgery ; and it was to be recollected that it was not mere justice, but ma nifest, signal, and conspicuouejustice, that was to satisfy the public. Hence it might be laid down as a maxim, with very few exceptions, that the acts for which the punish ment of death should be applied, should not only be in the highest degree dangerous to society, but attended with cir cumstances of violence and blood, leaving a deep impression on the mind, and reviving indignation at the offender at ' the recollection of his crime. He did not mean to under-- value the guilt of forgery, but he contended that, accord ing to the general feeling of mankind, it was not that species of crime which, by subsequent reflection upon its circumstances, recalled a sense of the justice of the punishment. He now came to the proposition he intended to offer by way of amendment. He proposed that Courts of Justice should have power to inflict imprison ment and hard labour for a term of not more than four teen years, giving also liberty to inflict solitary confine , ment in cases absolutely, requiring it; or he would give Courts the power to tratrport the prisoner to any place to be named by his Majesty and his Privy Council beyond seas, for a term not exceeding 14 years; or, lastly, lie would arm Courts, in cases of rare occurrence, requiring more than usual severity, with authority to inflict both punishments, the one to succeed the other. He proposed these alternatives, in order that there might be many de grees of punishment, as there were many degrees of guilt; and as it was an experiment, lie was desirous that it should be made in a manner best fitted to ensure success. An other amendment would be, that the power existing in Colonial Governmoents, under certain circumstances, to remit the punishment, should be taken away in cases of forgery, and that no sentence should be remitted but by• decision of the King in Council. It hail been said that if this experiment failed, return to the old system was im possible. But what did that assertion prove? If there were any foundation for it, it showed that such was the abhorrence now entertained of the infliction of capital punishment in cases of forgery, after the experience of its inadequacy, that a future Parliament will find it impos sible to re-introduce it. It might be said by the Right lion. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) that the time was not yet come when it would be fit to make so great a change; but he (Sir J. Macintosh) would ask, in reply, where was the danger, if the House endeavoured to quicken the pace of Ministers upon this subject? The House of Commons, speaking the sense of the people of England, might very properly urge the Members of the Cabinet to in creased speed; and, although it was very possible that ere long Memliers would have to return to their consti tuents, they might very fairly urge, that if they haul erred ' it was in favour of the cause of humanity, and to prevent the commission of crime. The House would err, in de ference to the general testimony of all who were best ac quainted with the subject, and who, in the petitions, had given the same evidence that they would have delivered upon oath. When the question was discussed in 1822, the case of the forgery of wil!s had made a great impres sion adverse to a change in the law ; a return had been made of all the convictions since that year for the forgery of all instruments ; it appeared that there were only ten eases of the kind, and was it worth while to preserve the severity of the law for their sake? Important changes of opinion upon this subject had already occurred. He re collected that when he (Sir J. Macintosh) proposed, in 1821, to lessen the punishment for the forgery of mar riage registers, it was vehemently opposed on the ground that it opened the door to the fabrication of evidence of marriage, legitimacy, and the transmission of property; yet only a short time since the Right Hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) had reduced the crim e to a misdemeanour without opposition. The real question was, whether there was any great danger in endeavouring to ascertain by ex perience whether this country can have its • property . pro tected with a considerably greater severity of punishment than was known in any other State of Europe ? Even if his amenlmsnta were adopted, the infliction would be heavier than it WAS at present on the Continent. He thought that tl err would be no such danger, and there fore moved an amendment upon the original motion, the nature of which he bad already opened. The question was then put on the amendment, when Sir ROBERT PEEL rose and said, that if he had ex pected, when be came into the House that evening, to find the question of forgery treated as a party question, and as one by which the'fate of a Ministry might be de cided, such an impression would have been removed by the great, not to say lavish, encomiums bestowed on his humble exertions by the Right Hon. Gentleman. But he entered the House with no such impression, knowing, and he rejoiced at it, that the time was at length come when they could consider all questions connected with the cri- , minal law of the country not as party questions, and not he liable to have their attention diverted from the sound reasons which ought to determine their conduct, and from the interests of those classes for which they were called on to legislate. He wished to defer to the views of the Right Hon. Gentleman and the great body of the petitioners; and if he had been compelled to adopt a con clusion different from them, he could assure them that it was after deliberate consideration that lie had attained to the honest conclusion that it would he better to preserve the punishment of death for forgery than abandon it. He had no motives to make him wish to differ from them, and he had no previously formed theories which he was anxious to support. From the Right Hon. Gentleman's general doctrines respecting the punishment of death.he did not dissent ; but he wished to state his opinion, with the reasons and the facts on which it had been formed, on the question whether . the punishment of death ought to be preserved or abandoned. There were no reasons that he knew of, nor any circum stances in his situation, why he should not be ready to adopt the views of the Right Hon. Gentleman. By the Bill which be had introduced into the House he proposed to meliorate one part of our criminal code, and his course had uniformly been towards the mitigation of its severity. When he came into office, seven years before the present period, the criminal law of Great Britain exceeded, in seve rity, the criminal codes of every other part of Europe, and he had then thought it ought to be meliorated. He made it, since be had been in office,, the great object of his ambi ' tion, not to set the example of meliorating this code, but to follow the example previously set by others. He had found, however, that the habits and usages of the country were adapted to and formed on the severity of our code, anti he found it necessary to proceed in the mitigation of this severity with great caution. He thought it advantageous to continue the severity of the law in its letter, but gra dually to meliorate its practical application. The Bills he had introduced into Parliament, consolidating the criminal laws, had, in part, abandoned capital punishment; but he looked forward to a time when the criminal law, after the consolidation of its different parts should be car ried into effect, should be again brought under their consideration. When that was the case, the House might, with propriety, take the question into consideration, whether further mitigation of its seve rity should not be attempted. In his views he bad adopted the recommendation of the Committee over which the Right lion. Gentleman had presided, anti had endea voured first to simplify the law, in order to its mitigation afterwards. What he had done to consolidate the law was not to prevent the whole subject being hereafter brought under review ; and when the simplification was complete, a further mitigation of its severity might he found expedient. If he resisted, at that time, the propo sition to abolish the punishment of death for forgery, he must appeal to the course ho hail pursued, and to the prac tical application he had made of thy law, to show that he was not attached to that punishment. He had not con tented himself with a bare expression of his opinion on this point ; he had, by the advice he bail given to the Crown, carried those opinions into active operation. He found that in the seven years previous to 1822, when he came into office, the number of execations, in England and \Vales, was 731, while the number of executions since 1822—that is up to December, 1829—was 433, , showing a considerable diminution.. The number of executions in London. and Middlesex in the former seven years was 192 ; in the latter seven years, or during the' period that he had been in office, it was 120, showing a diminution of 72. He was afraid that this diminution could not be laid to the account of the diminution of capital offences, as they hail been rather on the increase. Perhaps, indeed, the mitigation of the severest of the laws might have en couraged and facilitated prosecutions, and so more capi tal crimes had been prosecuted, but he d d not be lieve that the diminution of executions could be ac acounted for by the diminution of capital offences. He thought that the House, when it took the subject into its serious consideration, would pause before it gave its consent to abolish the punishment of death for for gery; and he wished first to state the reasons, anti after wards the facts, which ought to be well weighed by Hon. Members before they consented to abolish the capital punishment for this crime. With respect to the crime itself, there were great reasons, considering the magnitude of the gain which might be acquired—the facility of per forming the crime, the difficulty of detection, and the temptation , marked it with peculiar characteristics. As an illustration of the magnitude of the sums to be obtained he would refer - to the case of Fauntleroy, the amount of whose forgeries was not less than 353,0001. The Bank of England was answerable fur forgeries committed by this individual through a series of years, and actually paid a sum of 353,000/. Looking at the temptation, he would observe, that it came across a man overwhelmed with dis tress, who, by the mere presenting a draft at a banker's, might be relieved from his difficulties, and find himself suddenly in the midst of prosperity ; and then, if he did succeed, there was the difficulty of detection. In this. crime there was none of the revolting circumstances which alarmed mankind. There was no confederacy necessary. The cri ninal did not need to disclose Lis guilt to any par ticeps criminis; there was, consequently, an extreme diffi culty of detection, the draft was paid by the hanker's clerk, who might, perhaps, he induced in a case of need, to cancel it, or to deliver it up. Then the signature might be so well imitated that no precaution could detect the forgery at the moment. No vigilance, therefore, could guard against it; and when it was once committed there might be no re medy. No receiver, too, was necessary, as in the case of many other crimes ; and the property, when once obtained, could not be made evidence against the criminal. But even the crime itQelf might he committed by an innocent man, and a man ignorant that he was committing a crime. A man presented a draft at a hanker's ; it was paid in the hurry of business over a-crowded desk ; the person who presented it might not be the forger, but somebody whom he had employed. The real guilty party might escape, if the stake were large enough, to the Continent; he might leave the country ; hut even if lie did not do that, the difficulty of detection was very great. • It depended ob viously on a question of personal identity. The clerk who paid the draft must, in the first instance, recognize the man who presented it ; and if he were only sonic ignorant and innocent agent, be must recognize his employer. Thus, it was a question of double identity; and that must be de cided, before the guilt could be brought home to any per son. . When he recollected, therefore, the magnitude of the gain —the great temptation—the difficulty of the detection --that there were no confederates necessary, and no violence to alarm people, as in a burglary or murder ; coupling all these circumstances wi , h the large properties concerned, lie thought they invested this crime with a peculiar and ex clusive character—a character which belonged to no other species of crime against which the Legislature had to guard. Before the House resolved to abolish the punishment of death, the Members should be well convinced that they could find a more efficacious punishment, such as that recommended by the Right Hon. Gentleman. The House, bsfore it came to such a resolution, would pause, and it would deliberate long before it adopted the propo sition of the Right Hon. Gentleman. He did not by any means undervalue the public sympathy in giving force to qluieestmiouna,tthboeugaihle, due laws respecto r i•en the opinions u t nugatory;us ~of to p petitioners, i t a i ri d :r e s t : ed but w l i i t e h did all not find them conclusive against this view. The peti tioners, generally speaking, were not the persons most in terestedwere all the arguments he could urge, he must abandon if he looked only at indi vidual of the punishment of death prevented the defence of the law—but if it could be made out that co mmission of the crime--if public morals were pro nt. If a regard to that i t n e r t e , a punishment—if i a s t h i mu increase i u f f the without tha t ttp t e l l: i ce e nt e ist b inen ti r the fe r a e r w o o f uh t l h h i e s offence— if these things could all lie made out, then there would be very strong, and, indeed, very powerful reasons for maintaining the punishment. If it could be shown that the fear of death did Operate to prevent the commission of the crime of forgery, aura if property were defended by i t __which was not immaterial—he conceived that th e y would not be justified in abolishing it. If he could also show that those who petitioned against it were not the parties most interested in it, he thought the House would have good reasons for withholding its assent. The chief petitioners in favour of the measure most interested in i t were the country and provincial bankers; but tit. direct st, u was d titts i lo m ,t ,h m eterh ed yeg f i r a e. t ta, e in , t interestte, te l centre interest es r (e 0, t faf had and a, the br, in .ta eno bankers drawni rl t sl ta m v oof e on r a eLl o ,o t to tnrd‘ b e comonns .. negoti ated through the whole country, but what found their war to London. The danger of for,fery, therefore, was ten fold greater in London than in any other place. Since the abolition of the small notes also,, the number of forgeries committed on country bankers had considerably diminished. Forgeries of Si. notes, and of notes to a larger amount, had never been so frequently forged as the one pound ani! two pound notes. It might, at first view, appear a easy to obtain fifty pounds or twenty pounds for signing a name, as IL or 21. ; but it was to be remembered that the large sums caused the notes to be examined. The small notes also were taken by a different class of persons— they were passed among the working classes, who had not time or skill to examine them or to detect the for gery. Moreover, generally, the 51. notes were made pay able in London ; and if they were once paid, the Lon. don banker was responsible for the suns. As to cheques, which were the great instruments forged, the country bankers hardly use them. 'They were not acquainted with cheques as they were used by the London bankers. Besides, in their narrow circle, every person who drew cheques was known, and forgery was much more difficult than irt London. He believed that a forgery of a cheque in any provincial town, except Bristol, Liverpool, Man chester, and one or two others, was hardly known. Thus in estimating the interests of . London and country tankers in this question, those of the latter would be found to be comparatively small. The argument in favour of the prin ciple be was opposing was this, and he wished to state it fairly. The severity of the law, it was said, defeats its own object ; that it prevents prosecutions ; that it leads, when criminals are prosecuted, to their acquittal; that it enlists in their cause the sympathies of juries, and the sym pathy of the public, and, leaving a prosecutor without hope of obtaining a conviction, gives him an interest in avoiding a prosecution. Ile admitted the existence of tt reluctance to prosecute, but he believed that it was not always wholly dictated by conscientious motives; other motives, mingling with the conscientious motives, (lid deter people from prosecution. There was the great ex pence of the prosecution, and the chance of the criminal escaping. When a man had been defrauded of 801. or 100/, he did not always see the necessity of expending 801. or 1001. in prosecuting the criminal, without a chance of recovering his property. It might only be regarded, according to a vulgar saying, as throwing good money after bad : and, therefore, prosecutions were abstained from on account of the expence, as well as on ac count of conscientious motives. To illustrate this he Would observe that the country bankers had proposed to the Bank of England, in cases where the forged bills of the latter were paid to the former, to give the Bank of Eng land all the information in their power if it would prose cute, or even to be at half the expense ; but when they found that the Bank would do neither they declined to prosecute. He would not allow, therefore, that all the reluctance proceeded from conscientious motives; and he would not admit, that if the law were altered, there would be a reluctance to prosecute. He was sorry to fa tigue the House with details, but he hoped that the Mem bers would give to the following facts their deliberate at tention. The argument was, that the reluctance to punish the parties with death prevented individuals fi oat prose cuting and Juries from convicting. It was difficult to de termine the cases not prosecuted. Individual instances were no doubt known of, but he hoped the House would not draw a general conclusion from isolated fasts. He would compare the case abandoned by the prosecutors, after commencing the prosecution, for forgery and some other crimes. Selecting the seven between 1823 and 1829, inclusive, he had examined the question in reference to six other capital offences ; that was, he had taken the charges preferred on six capital offences, and the num ber of prosecutions abandoned on them. These were murder, burglary, highway robbery, horse-stealing, sheep stealing, and offences under Lord Elienborough's Act. On these six capital offences, the number of offences charged in the seven years was 8,392 ; and of these 1,054 hail not been prosecuted, or the abandonment of prosecutions amounted to one-eighth of the whole number of charges. The number of charges of forgery during the same period was 383, and of these 53 cases had not been prosecuted. There was, therefore, about one-eighth of these as of the former class of crimes. There was no greater number abandoned in forgery than in murder and other crimes. The acquittals were of more importance, in his view of the matter, than the abandonments of prosecution, for they. had in them less of what was vague and uncertain. Taking the capital crimes before mentioned, he fouad that the number charged in the seven years he had alluded to was 7,328, and of these the convictions were 4,850, so that the proportion of convictions to charges was as two to three. There was one-third acquitted. The propor tion of acquittals for forgery was not greater. It might be said, indeed, that several of the crimes he had selected —such as sheep-stealing and horse-stealing —were, like forgery, condemned by the general sentiment, and therefore that the acquittals under them would be as numerous a those under the charge of forgery, and from the sante cause. To avoid this imputation, he would take the case of murder, and see what proportion the charges and the acquittals bore to each other. The charges ter murder, in the seven years, were 479, and the convictions were only 09 ; so that the convictions were, to the charges, as one to five. There were in the same period 2,760 charges of forgery, and the convictions were 1,790; so that the House would see that the convictions were more numerous in proportion for for gery than for murder. The latter was as five to eight, the for mer only as one to five. If, then, time punishment of death checked the crime of forgery, it was a protection to public mo. rality. The parties most interested in the question of the pre venting of forgery were the London bankers, and Bank of Eng land, and he would advert to the magnitude of the prop..rty they had at stake. He would first take the case of the Bank of Eng land, and the House would see if the punishment of death might not be necessary for the protection of its property. The number of stock accounts in the Bank of England was not less than 3,000,003. It pays, in one year, not less than 400,000 drafts,and there are not less than 1,000 transfers ofstocks made in its books daily. Before they came to any detennination on this subject, they ought to look at the state of criminal prosecutions for for gery at the present moment. And first he would beg the House to look at the number of prosecutions instituted by those esta blishments most exposed to suffer from forgery. The prosecu tions, then, of the Bank of England since the withdrawal of the I/. notes had been gradually on the decline. Bear this in mind, therefore, when the question of altering the law was to be con sidered, that an establishment which had 300,000 accounts of stocks—Which paid 400,000 cheques every year, and which had 100 transfers of stock every day, there had been only two prose cutions for forgery at the last Assite, while up to the present moment there was not a prosecution pending for the next Assizes. This was the state of crime, with reference to this great esta blishment, under the present law of punishing forgery by death. He had felt it his duty to make very minute inquiries with re spect to the practical operation of the present system, in the case of the great London bankers, in order that he might come to some positive conclusion whether the infliction of the punish ment of des , h tended to the promotion of morality, or of the reverse.. It might be necessary to state that in London there had been formed, in the year 1825, an institution for the purpose of protecting bankers against forgery, by an immediate prosecu. tion of all those accused of that crime. This' association was composed of thirty-six of the most eminent London bankers. They have a secretary and a solicitor, and to them, he appre hended, it was the practice to commit the conduct of the prosecu tion. The members were, of course, bound to communicate any offence in the way of forgery, of which they became cognisant. He believed there were two instances of a departure from that practice. He would not name them; but, ordinarily, he under stood, it was the practice for the members to communicate to the secretary and solicitor the commission of any forgery which came to their knowledge. Mr. MARTIN begged pardon for interrupting the Right Hon. Gentleman ; but although he was a member of the association, he never understood that it was binding on them to make an> communication to the secretary or solicitor, unless they thought proper to do so. Sir R. PEEL said he did not wish to mention names, but he had been assured of the fact on very good authority. Return ing, however, to this association, he found, by returns which he had received, that at the clearing office of these bankers there were paid, on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of the month of May, bills and cheques to the number of 45,8001., and the money re ceived in this amazing number of drafts and bills, all of them liable to be made subjects of forgery, they amounted to ten millions and ninety-five thousand pounds. But this was not all, he found that four of the banking houses, whose members be. longed to the Committee, liquidated demands upOn paper, and therefore liable to forgery, to the extraordinary amount of five hundred millions in the year. Now by the returns from the Secretary of the Committee of London bankers, he found that in 1827 there were nineteen forgeries committed, and that the amountof the forgeries was 7,0001. In 1828, there were sixteen forgeries, and the amount was 15,0001. In 1829, there were twelve forgeries, and the amount was 2,500/. ; and in the present year, up to the latest time at which.the return could be made, out, there were only four forgeries, and the amount was 6581. Coupling, therefore, the fact of there being at the pre sent moment no forgery under prosecution by the Bank of England, and that the prosecutions by this society of ' the bankers of the metropolis were gradually diminish_ ing, lie thought they ought materially to consider how far the present law had proved sufficient for its end, before they abandoned the . infliction of the punishment of death, and substituted for it a secondary punishment, which was expected to operate more effectually to the preven tion of crime. He confessed he had not heard from the -Right Hon. Gentleman that satisfactory explanation of the nature and effect of secondary punishments which he expected from him tile, were :f r e e r e n : e t e l i t ti o rieabl t niy i d s z s rb u tteh b a j tei e owboteuanenne'ldfc' imprisonment unrcci accustomed, nhise,,biiy: ftais:eioieff e a s sda}errsa f to o tehf r gm, the punishment generally were, to all the comforts and many of the luxuries of icial else they were, by their habits and education, placed in a situa- Pt s i el li n wh d i a n:i r ee ;pu Po Lliments. In many eases the Goveniment bad tried the effect of secondary punishments. They had impri soned men for seven years, and what was the consequence ? Why that the low diet and the languor produced by solitary confinement had given rise to a mortally infectious disease, which the most eminent physicians ascribed, after the most minute inquiry, to purely moral causes, to the languor of lons were far f w ar ith and solitary confinement, coupled with the prison diet, which, as a fit punishment, was allotted to them. It was observed, to the Committee Th o most formidable aggravations of s a a ll t br e d w u h u e s n se g b ir ee in t g , t h h i a s evidence re movedr from such privations. But in addition to disease, solitaryn t i h i c e o o l s i e i r lfin w e h m os e e nt v , a e n , d i 0 low habits t, a ct there was another evil to be guarded against. It not un ifnreeenittelnetdly t h o ap s p e e m n e ed o , f j a m t the languor of • solitary confine mental insanity: Then came the question of whether this in sanity was feigned or real—whether the sufferings were pretended, or the result of the situation and previous habits of the criminat double milWen:d b f force b r c y S o i —so that, under any view of the case, the infliction of long soli ley confinement as a secondary punishment, presented number ! .ss difficulties. Then came the question of the infliction of hard I.e.mr. Now, with every disposition to make the criminal suffer by the infliction of hard labour, it not unfrequently happened - hat his previous habits of life precl u ded th e p oss ibility o f th eir putting that portion of the sentence in force. It was frequently impossible to inflict such a punisliment.—(Hear.)—But supposi:.g tie did send a man of education to the hulks at Deptford or Chatham, after he has been there for two or three years, suffer ing under the eyes of the public, what security had the Executive hat the public sympathy wotild not be as much awakened in his favour. and the public prejudice as much directed against the inflict on of hard labour, as it is now against the taking away Cie life of the offender for the same crime ? What certainty bad he that the public and prosecutors would not shrink As much from inflicting the punishment of solitary hn .risonment or hard labour, as they now do from thet of loath ? The infliction of secondary punishments,' such as berd labour, low diet, and solitary confinement, had been tied for ten years, and they found it impossible to con.. nine it, for the consequence always was, that if they were aompelled to alter the diet of the prisoners, and to give a mind of nutriment, which, as was observed by an Hon. Member Colonel Davies) the other evening, when he had. not an oppor •;unity of answering it, rendered the situation of the convict en Object of envy to the agricultural labourer, whose honest induct y could not procure him any sustenance of the same description. ft was said, however, that they might transport offenders of this description to New South Wales, and keep them to hard labour t :ere. Independent of the power which a man of education must d ways exercise among such persons as he would be compelled to associate with in New South Wales, it was scarcely possible to guard against other peculiarities of the situation of a person com mitting forgery. A man who forges seldom or ever does so with_ nut succeeding, so as to secure a considerable sum of money. He may escape discovery long enough to accumulate a very large mum, and it must therefore be taken into calculation, that when detected and subjected to punishment, he will employ a portion of his gains to the purpose of securing his escape. In truth, if the infliction of secondary punishments, such as imprisonment confinement to the hulks, were to be had recourse to in such cases, he for one had no confidence in being able to prevent a forger from finding the means of escape. For these reasons, which he had thus candidly avowed, lie had no confidence in se condary punishments producing the end they had in view—the prevention of crime, unless they made them so severe that the mind of the prisoner would be affected—the public sympathy awakened for his suffe. ings, or his constitution prove inatleatuate to the support of the sentence. On these grounds, therefore, ha submitted the question to the impartial and unbiassed decision of the House—premising only that his decided opinion, supported by many years' experience, was in favour of the law as it stood, and expressing, as he did, his conscientious conviction that the adoption of the Right Hon. Gentleman's proposition would not tend to the depression of crime. —(Hear, hear.) Mr. BROUGHAM said he felt bound, from the very same arguments, to came to a different conclusion from that adopted by the slight Hon. Gentleman. It was said that the number of prosecutions by the Bank of England were daily diminiihing, and that as there could be no such desire to avoid the infliction of capital punishments in the minds of the Directors of the Bank of England as was visible in others, as they were free from any scruples on that point, that therefore the offbnce of forging was not so often committed, and the law requited no alteration, because it worked well for the protection of the bankers and the public. The Right Hon. Gentleman also contended that secondary punishments were not safe to rest on for a security ; and he contended that they were at all times of too unsatisfactory a nature to deter from the commission of crime. Now, that was just his (Mr. Brougham's) difficulty in this case. How was it that the law performs its office well ? Why, because of this very secondary punishment, which the Right Hon. Gentleman attempted to demonstrate as inefficient and insupportable, and almost impossible to be executed. He would just beg of the House to look a little at the real state of the case. In the last seven years there had been 217 convictions for forgery—that is, 217 persons sentenced to death, independent of those who were compelled to suffer minor punishments for minor offences of the same nature. And how many have been subjected to the unsatisfactory and ineffectual, and all but im practicable secondary punishments, which the Right Hon. Gentleman describes ? Why, of this 217, just 24 were executed —just nine to one therefore have been subjected to the secondary punishment alone. If, therefore, there is but one criminal hung out of every ten, the punishment of death, upon which the Right Hon. Gentleman lays so much stress, terrifies, not because it is certain, but because it is nine to one that the criminal escape. The persons who commit forgery are practical . men, they are skilled in calculation. They know that one in ten is executed, and that the others escape. It is, therefore, ten to one, in the present case, in their minds, that having eoin mitted forgery, they may not, if detected and convicted, escape that punishment which the Right Hon. Gentleman say. they so much dread ; for if they do not look forward with anxiety and dread to the consequences of their crime, the whole of the It:g tit Han. Gentleman's arguments fail altogether. The question then is—and it is now a new one—whether, if the chance of the punishment of death happening to one in ten, does not prevent the crime of forgery, the certainty of the secondary puetalinient whietli they also must calculate on, will not operate materially to influence those who are disposed to the commission of such a crime? It is well known that the men who generally embark in hazardous enterprises, such as those undertaken by the forger, are persons of a very sanguine temperament, and they generally build very strongly on their good fortune, and take a yery favour able view of the prospects under which they venture to commit such a crime. Ought the Legislature then to build tip a fabric to encourage those sanguine temperaments, and hold out to the forger a prospect spread before him, a field of chances, in which there are nine to one in favour of his escaping with impunity from the fate which should await his crime ? First, there is the chance that he will mot be detected; secondly, there is the chance that when detected, he will, from motives of humanity, and because the persons on whom he has forged disapprove of the punishment of death, not be prosecuted. Next, then, is the chance that when prosecuted he may, from some fl aw in the evidence, escape conviction ; and lastly, there is the chance that after having run through all this gauntlet, lie will be landed in such a situation, that it is ten to one whether he does not escape capital punishment. This is the position in whiots those who commit forgery feel themselves now ; and these are the terrors which the Right Hon. Gentleman would have them to believe led to the gradual extinction of forgery. One gnat difficulty was to induce Juries, under the existing law to convict for forgery. But the grand difficulty was to prevail on prose.. cutors and witnesses to come forward. Even if prosecutors wen, callous themselves, which was rarely the case, they were stir. rounded by persons who were not to, and who would dissuade them from prosecuting, lest, in the event of a conviction, the Judge should happen to lean towards severity. Whether from one motive or another, therefore, prosecutors were disinclined to proceed; but principally, perhaps, because they felt that the reluctance of witnesses and jurors rendered it a matter of great difficulty to obtain a conviction. The statute book might he blackened or reddened as much as they chose, but it was merely waste paper, if the enactments a hich it contained could not be carried into effect. It ought to be considered that there was no publ.c prosecutor here as there was in Scotland, and this he was free to confess seemed to him to be the root of much evil in all our criminal proceedings. But if prosecutors were with diffi culty brought forward, the difficulty of bringing forward wit. nesses was still greater. Those who had been aecustonnxt to at. 'end the Assizes at Lancaster were alone able to judge of Oro dif. ficulty of inducing persons engaged in mercantile pursuits, and residing in Liverpool or Manchester, to sacrifice their time an d to travel 50 or tiO miles, in order to give evidence in ordinary cases. How much more reluctant they were to come when their object was to establish the guilt of a human being, who might by their testimony be doomed to death, it was easy to imagine. The true mode of forming any penal code vas to make the nishment a certain one, whatever it might be. No man ,would commita crime, if he were absolutely certa n that in the course of three or four months he would be prosecuted and punished. NO man would ever forge a note for a thousand pounds if he were ibsolutelycertainthat, for that ofience, he would suffer ? not death, nut two years' imprisonment. It was true that it was possible to make the punishment of crime absolutely cees Min ; but every effort should be made to approximate as nearly as possible to that result. To show how much greater the ap proach to certainty in the punishment of some crimes was, as compared with the approach to certainty in the punishment of other crimes, he would contrast the crimes of murder and forgery. Of 117 persons convicted of forgery in seven years, on'y tit had been executed ; while of 107 persons convicted of murder in the same period, 85 had been executed. The Bank of England had only two prosecutions for forgery in the year. And why ? because they only brought forward cases in which they felt conlidout that they would obtain convictions. That the general out. pression throughout the country, on the part of these most Interested in the question, was in favour of the attention of death for the crime of forgery, could not be doubted. The table groaned with petitions to that ettl!et s The petitions were suggested, not merely by the feelings of humanity, but by the dictates of good sense, They proceeded front persons to whom paper credit was the breath of their nostrils ; they proceeded from persons who complained that the crime of forgery went unpunished ; and who declared that it would con, tinue to go unpunished while it continued to be a capital Mouse, The cases of forgery which the Bill exempted front the punish_ went of death were so rare that, practically speaking, they were which zero.the B B i l a l ri w k a . s n c o a t l e e s u , l b a i t i ed 6 t a o m en than notes were indee s t as nothing. The degree of imp rove ment in the law, theref ore , promissory d ri llen be rated highe r p .ec ro t m c frequently forged, but not so bonds or deeds. He would make a concession to the Right Hon. Gentleman—he would allow the punishment of death to be inflicted for the forgery of the Great Seal or for the forgery of the Privy Seal. ThO filet was, bow_ ever, that there was no reason for making any distinction what ever on the subject. Such were the opinions Which he enter tained upon this question—opinions which lie had imbibed many years ago from his great and lamented friend Sir Samuel Romilly —and therefore he had felt it his duty not to be altogether silent with respect to them. He congratulated the friends of humanity on the discussion of that night, and en the great progresa that they were making in public opinion ; and he congratulated his Hon. and Learned Friend on the prospect that he would live to see the day when this stain upon our statute book would be removed. Mr. F. BUXTON observed, that at that late hour he would trespass upon the patience of the House with very few remarks. The law, as it at present stood, encouraged, instead of discou raging crime; it was an encouragement to perjury on the part of jurors, grounded en a tenderness for human life. There wo4 much to justify this tenderness. If he were told that a ern:a:Anal would he subjected to some ignominious punishment—.that ha would be condemned to hard labour or transportation for life he might be induced to spare no pains to bring him to justice; but the case was different when he knew that the result of bring ing a criminal to justice might be that he would be put to death, and sent to the awful tribunal of another world with all his guilt on his head. Let the House recollect that a petition bad been that day presented in favour of abolishing the punishment et death for forgery, signed by above a thousand bankers. ThLt was not like an ordinary petition. No object could be sp im portant to such petitioners as the prevention of forgery, Hun dreds of millions of money passed through their hands ; and they were therefore most deeply interested in the adoption of such measures as would guard them from loss; but of those inembirew they declared by their petition that in their opinion the infliction of death for the crime of forgery was not one, It was formerly said that the friends of the abolition of the punishment of death for forgery were theoretical, Now, however, it was tbs. tinctly stated by large bodies of practical men, th a t th o exist. ence of the punishment of death for forgery prevented prosecu tions and convictions, and thereby lett their property unpro. tected. The difficulty of obtaining conviction:, naturally pre. vented bankers from prosecuting; fur it w as ol;vions that there were many reasons to disincline bankers from letting the world know that forgeries had been committed upon them, unless they could feel tolerably sure of being able to convict the persons lty whom those forgeries had been perpetrated. There were irg t ur other points on which it would be easy to dilate; but he Would abstain from troubling the House any further at that time. Mr. WY NN highly complimented his Right Roo, friend en the efforts which he had made and was making to anieliorete the criminal code of the country, although he could not agree with him on the present question. Ile must vote for the at,ch tion of the punishment of death, Was it not worth while to try the experiment of abolishing it ° If the experiment failed, the public feeling would then be reconciled, however reluc tantly, to the resell:On:mut of the capital punishment. In hi s opinion, the last and severest punishment that it was in th e power of man to inflict ought to be reserved fur ofTences of the greatest Moral guilt, Mr. J. MARTIN was persuaded that, upon the whole, it was desirable to try what effect the abolition of the punishment of death would produce. Sir J YORKE was of opinion that if the law were once altered it would not be easy to bring it back to its present state. Hay. ing more faith in the judgment of his Right Hon. Friend than he had in that of a thousand bankers, he should vote fur the Bill as it stood. Sir T. ACLAND (as we understood the Hon. Bart.) also sup pored the Bill. After a few words from Mr. Ham:swat and Sir Roam PeEL, the Committee divided— For the Amendment ll3 Against it lB • Majority The various Clauses of the gill then went tlito,ol the Com mittee. Mr. F. BUX lON gave notice that cn the Winging up of the d molt t Hon; ent he ice be the re wouid t a t lie )minit ion on ended cor- leer's :aticti Ele Can e re -11, to rned, bad and a of As ecol anti iting this Af elltel natie