The Sun.
London, England, 1830-04-03 00:00:00

Ithem accessible to every body, by bringing them
Within a narrow compass, and ,mthielYthus tend to
diminish crime by making its penalties more certain.
By his various Bills of consolidation, 'modification,
and arrangement, we shall at lad obtain the advan-
tages of a modern criminal code, without the forma-
lity or pedantry of such a code among 'our neigh-
bours,—we shall enjoy the benefits of a digested
system, without the hazards of an appeal to untried
theories. In that part of the field of criminal juris-
prudence over which he has already travelled, he has
left traces of unequivocal and acknowledged improve-
ment, and fully verified those prophecies of advan-
tage from a judicious change which previous re-
formers bad uttered with confidence, but unfor-
tunately wanted the power to realize. The Right
Hon. Gentleman, on Thursday night, brought for-
ward his promised measure for consolidating and
mitigating the long list of acts relative to the
penalties of forgery. Never, perhaps, was a crime
more fertile in statutes than this, and never, perhaps,
were statutes more impregnated with cruel arid in-
discriminate severity. Death is made to overlook
the forger at every attempt to invade property,
where the fraud and mischief are necessarily trivial
or limited, as well as in the commission of enormous
acts of plunder, which ruin families, destroy com-
' mercial confidence, or shake the credit of great
establishments. As legislation began on the sub-
ject as soon as the nature or frequency of commercial
transactions rendered the offence of easy or frequent
commission, it extended along with the increase of
trade or business ; but the punishment of death was
not enacted against the forger till the time of King
William, when it was made capital to forge the se-
curities of the Bank of England. Since that time
our statutes on the subject of forgery have multi-
plied as much as our paper-money or national debt,
and every commercial legislator seems to have taken
Draco for his model. The number of these acts
Mr. Peel states at about 120, 61 of which inflict

capital punishment. In the statement which Mr.
Peel made to the House explanatory of the object
of his Bill, the Right Hon. Gentleman divided the
statutes against forgery into two classes : first, those
which relate to public or general affairs; and se-
condly, those relative to official or departmental
documents. In the first are included forgeries of
all documents or papers for the transfer of the
public funds,—forgeries of negotiable securities, of
bills of exchange, of promissory notes, of deeds for
the transfer of personal property, deeds relating to
marriages or testamentary bequests, and public
registers. The second comprehends all documents
connected with the Army and Navy Pay-offices, the
Customs and Excise, Chelsea and Greenwich
Ho'spitals, and other public institutions. The Right
Hon. Gentleman does not, of course, go the length
of some humane theorists in proposing to abolish,
in all cases, the capital punishment denounced against
forgery in the existing statutes. Where the crime
is of easy commission, of difficult detection, and
tends to produce extensive mischief, as in the case of

forgeries of negotiable securities, of Bank-notes, of
wills, and other such instruments, the extreme
penalty of the law is still to be retained, aid the
only effect of the Bill will be, to bring a great num-
ber of acts into one, to describe or limit the nature
of the offence, and to make some changes in the
kind of evidence required to establish the fact. In
the other cases where capital punishment is abo-
lished, and the offence is to be visited with minor
penalties, we have few details in the speech of the
Right Hon. Gentleman. The following is the part
of his address which contains the distinction above
alluded to, and his proposed changes:—
" The great principle to which he adhered was to con-
fine the punishment of death to the forgery of negotiable
and transferable securities, and to every thing which repre-
sented money. He might add to them the forgery of -the
great seal, the privy seal, and the sign manual. He should
also add the forgery of wills and personal property. In
documents of that kind no witnesses were necessary, and
as they were generally not produced till the death of the
parties, and might therefore be made the instruments of
great deception, and cause great injury to families, be had
thought it rigl,t with regard to them to retain the capital
punishment. He added to these all false entries relative
to public stocks—all forgeries of promissory notes—all
fraudulent attempts to procure money—all forgeries of the
notes of the Bank of England—in fact, all documents re-
presenting
money, or which came under the denomination
of negotiable or transferable securities. In the cases where
he remitted the punishment of death, he was confident
there would lie much difference of opinion as to their pro-
priety-, and that some persons would be inclined to sup-
pose he had not gone far enough, and others much too far;
but he was of opinion that there would be more security
in that course, and that a great deal of good might be done
by the increased caution which these exceptions would in-
troduce. He proposed, therefore, to except from the
punishment of death all forgeries of receipts for money and
goods—all issuing of forged stamps, or forgeries of stamps
:--all attempts to defraud by forged orders—all fabrica-
tions of bank paper, that is, the paper on which notes are
stamped—all forgeries of deeds and bonds, and every docu-
ment which did not come under the class he had named,
and which were not negotiable or transferable securities.
For these offences death was now very rarely inflicted, and
he was ready to admit that it ought not •to be inflicted."
We entirely concur with Mr. Peel in thinking
that it would be extremely dangerous to abolish the
punishment of death denounced against forgery in
the cases where he reserves it. Even the French
code makes it, capital to forge the paper of the Bank
of France ; and any remission of extreme penalties
in a similar case with us would produce the greatest
alarm for the security of negotiable securities in
every class of society. On the other hand, nothing
could be more impolitic than to preserve the capital
penalty in the statute-book, in cases where the hu-
manity and justice of society combine to rescue the
offender from its infliction. When the punishment
is so monstrously disproportioned to the crime that
our sympathies are engaged for the criminal, the law
becomes a dead letter; parties who are injured will
be alarmed to prosecute, witnesses will exhibit a
merciful prevarication, and juries will cease to con-
vict. Thus a culprit will escape death, and can
suffer no punishment less severe. But by graduat-
ing punishment according to the magnitude of the
crime, and thus making its infliction certain, we de-
stroy this dangerous lottery of justice, and deprive
the forger of that premium of escape, on the hopes
of which he staked his character.—Times.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND.—The following
is the House List of Gov Enrolls and DIRECTORS
of the Rink of England for the year ensuing, vis.

FOR GOVERNORS.
JOHN HORSLEY PALMER, Esq., Governor.
ANDREW HENRY THOMSON, Esq., Deputy-Governor.

John Bowden, Esq.
Cornelius Buller, Esq.