The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-15 00:00:00

LoSPON, TrESDAY. MARCH hi.

Tut di.* of half-murdered and mutilated women
and LLl:dien, after in ing echoed be the press during
so sL rt yeti sl of time, have at length reached the
6,,,,;,feent, mid to-night the Second Heading ct the
a.. • trel I,saults Hill is to be moved in the House
.-.srava • •
of c,„„tzuss. Ministers are coming to the assistance
of st44istrilti.S. and husbands and fathers of san-
r,,e„ry dispositiun arc to be deprived of the liberty
of =using themselves with the agonies of their
wins or sons and daughters. We have for some
time p,..; diligently drawn the attention of the pub.
lic to the unprotected state of the weaker portion of
the ptrithi;ion, endue hail with satisfaction the pro-
w-. et any alteration taking place in a state of
thi:•ss which reflects infinite discredit upon the
all means discourage the brutes who are
cowa▪
rdly enou,.th to vent their rage against those
who have the greatest claim upon their protection.
The gat-stk.', however, remains to be considered,
wins!.er the Government plan is really calculated to
act in checking the ferocious deeds against
which it is directed. Will the gentlemen who turn
their bedrooms into torture chambers be likely. to
desist hum their exciting recreations upon hearing
of the alteration contemplated by the Govern-
ment ? Thu theory of punishment which obtains
the most favour at the present dov is,
that it is not intended to be inflicted as
vengeance for crimes past, but for the pre-
nation of climes future. CANNON, the sweep, is
transported to a place where an unlimited supply of
policemen and unuffending citizens to he murdered
will be denied to him, not so much because he nearly
mil:dend one policeman as to deter ruffians of simi-
lar tastes from murdering others. We are not arguing
for t'.e rectness of this view, we are merely stating
it. 'flu chief end of punishment in the present day
is said to be the prevention of crime. Will the altera-
tion in the law proposed by Mr. Frrznov be of avail
to make the recurrence of the brutalities in question
km frequent? Mr. FITZROY proposes to enlarge
the discretion of the magistrates with respect to the
aniount of tine and the duration of imprisonment.
He tell that, in asking for this extension of
maxisterial powers, he simply demands as much pro-
tection to women as is now afforded to cats and
dogs. The request is reasonable enough ; will the
granting of it afford the protection required? This may
be doubted. Whether it is that men moving
in the middle and higher classes of society are really
less addicted to kicking and punching their wives,
Of whether the wives ot that class when maltreated
consider that exposure in a police court would only
add to their sufferings, we know not. Certain it is,
that the lowest classes have almost a monopoly of
this crime. An ill-natured foreigner, struck with
the number of cases of violence towards females
which stud the columns of the daily press, asked
with some bitterness how many of the men who
mobbed Ilaesat; for flogging a woman were guilt-
less of the crime of knocking their own wives
down ? With some few exceptions the men
charged with this class of assaults belong
to the lowest rank in the social scale. What
diffeeence will an increase in the amount ot fine
male to them? They live from hand to mouth. If
they give their wives any portion of their wages at
all, it is usually just as much as may suffice for the
bare wants of the family, and every farthing
beyond this is spent in drink. Their rooms are
baie of every article of furniture beyond what is
actually nei.vesary. They have no clothes except
those on their backs. They are rich when they
have a few shillings in their pockets. They have
to money and have no means of producing it but
their labour. The effect, therefore, of a fine of five
pounds upon these men is as great as that of a fine
of twenty. They are as able to pay one as the
other. 'this is easily seen to 'be true by the fact
that the fine is scarcely ever paid, and the expiatory
imprisonment is almost always undergone. Five
pounds to a poor man is an impossible sum, and as
there are no degrees in impossibility, you gain
nothing by increasing his fine to ten. rho
increase of the pecuniary fine may thus be
said to be likely to prove totally inefficient,
except in the rare cases of men in the middle or
upper ranks found guilty of the offence of brutality.
And the great probability is, that in these cases the
proposed fine of 201. would fall so lightly upon the
criminal, that he would consider the indulgence of his
evil passions as cheaply purchased. The case of the
Captain guilty of an infamous assault, who, when
fined five pounds, pulled out a well-filled purse, and
asked in a drawling tone whether the magistrate
said " five or fifty," must be fresh in the memory of
all our readers.

The proposed lengthening of the duration of im-
prisonment seems better adapted to the end in view
than an augmentation in the amount of the fine. If
it is objected that the longer the husband is in con-
finement, the more the wife will suffer from the loss
of his earnings, it must be answered that the chance is
that she hashed but little from him when at liberty—
that she is in all probability capable of earning some-
thing herself ; and finally, that it is impassible to
devise any system which will not involve
hardships of some kind. Without offering any
present suggestion as to the nature of the punish-
ment to be inflicted, let us enter a protest
against Mr. NUN N'S attempt to cut the Gordian
knot of the difficulty. That gentleman recommended
that power to inflict corporal punishment for offences
of this kind should be conferred upon magistrates.
We sre sorry to find that this proposition was
cheered by the house. It is difficult to see what
ground fur cheering could be discovered in a
Foetal to make a retrograde step in criminal
lotion. Even should it be proved to be'
viable or necessary to make such a step,
it is a subject more for sorrow than delight. Bat
it must be proved first that the step is advisable.
Would the spectacle of a man being whipped for ill-
treating his wife cure the evil of wile-beating?
There aro many grounds for believing that the spec-
tacle of a public whipping would have a result the
very contrary to that intended. It is well known
that offenders punished by the whip in times past
not nofrequently earned a title to the sympathy of
the bystanders by manifesting an unabrinking en-
durance. All mobs are pleased with the exhibition
of " pluck." And if the lookers-on are of • elms
who aro not likely to view with any great abhorrence
the crime for which the offender is suffering, their ad-
miration will in all probability be excited by witnessing
a brave endurance of the punishment. If you turn
your criminals into heroes, you may wait long
enough before you will see the disappearance of
crime. Is not flogging a brutalised man the way to
brutalise him still more? The whole tendency of
modern legislation has been to abolish mere cruelty
in the infliction of punishment, and to work for the
reformation of the criminal. Public flogging sins
against this tendency most completely. No man
was ever reformed by a flogging. On the we-
meg, the best naval and military. authori-
ties will tell you that a man us seldom
flogged once only. The whip " burns in" the I
degradation that the crime had brought with it.
lithe offender was brutal before, he is still more so
alter the pain and disgrace of a whipping la public.
The only excuse for keeping up flogging at all on the
Army and Navy on service is, that there are in such
eireumstiumes no prisons at hand, and an offender
mast be dogged or shot. On the ground, therefore,
that the proposed punishment is a retrograde step in
mlation —that it sets us on the road which will lead
the adoption of torture as a mode ofjudicial satis-
faction -that it familiarises the public with brutal and
indecent sights—that it deteriorates the criminal in-
stead of improving him—we protest against the sug-
gestion of a return to the lash. l'rotect our women—
Pl7n-sh those who ill-treat them—transport them to
.1‘ %nos- where women are onebtainable if you will
take care that in punishing brutal men you do
tot adopt measures which hare a certain tendency to
not only them, but your population also.