The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-04 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION.

LONDON, SA7URDAY, JUNE 4, 1870.

One of the greatest and noblest among our philo-
sophic jurists, Sir MATTHEW HALE, wrote two cen-
turies ago, in his Pleas of the Crown, " When
offences grow enormous, frequent, and dangerous to
a kingdom or state, destructive or highly pernicious
to civil societies, and to the great insecurity and
danger of the kingdom or its inhabitants, severe
punishment, and even death itself is necessary to be
annexed to laws in many cases by the prudence of
lawgivers." A hundred years afterwards—a century
from the present time—Sir WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
declared it to be a melancholy truth, " that among a
variety of actions which men are daily liable to com-
mit no less than an hundred and sixty have been de-
clared by Act of Parliament to be felonies without
benefit of clergy, or, in other words, to be worthy of
instant death." An hundred and sixty !—then—in
the middle of the eighteenth century, when BLACK-
STONE was delivering at Oxford those famousVinerian
Lectures that afterwards grew into a classic authority
under the title of his "Commentaries." lVous aeons

change tout cela. In place of 160, read now, about six. ,
Capital punishment is only inflicted ,now, for a few
picked crimes of a more heinous, chiefly of a murder-
ous character—stabbing, cutting, wounding, poison-
ing. We have adopted long since what is called a
more humane code. Forgery is no longer dealt with ,
by the hangman, as in the case of the Rev. Dr. DODD
or of the eminent banker, Mr. FAUNTLEROY. Rape"
and certain crimes, foul and revolting, are no longer
so punishable. Remembering this, and reading from .
day to day the atrocities recorded in the living history of
the newspapers, thoughtful observers are driven,nowa-
days, to the revision of conclusions logically arrived at
years ago, and conscientiously maintained during
the lifetime of a whole generation—as to whether '
we have not been carrying this modern predilection,
for what is termed the humane code a little too far, '
and certainly to the most disastrous consequences.
We revert to the opinion of Sir MATTHEW HALE—
that " when offences grow enormous, frequent and
dangerous . . . severe punishment and even death
itself is necessary to be annexed in many cases by
the prudence of lawgivers." In diversity, in enormity,
and in multiplicity, the crimes very recently brought
to light, here, in the very midst of us, could hardly
in the blackest epoch of man's history be surpassed.
More pitilessly brutal murders than those perpe-
trated at Denham—craftier murders than those com-
mitted just before then at Chelsea—are not
recorded among the inhuman annals of the
Newgate Calendar. And simultaneously with
these, and with other horrible revelations,
there have been investigations going for-
ward very recently in our courts of justice so re-
volting in their character that they recall to mind
the condition of the cities destroyed by fire from
heaven—or those depravities, the evidences of which
have been preserved, to the horror of after times,
among the ruins of Pompeii, under the dust and
ashes from Vesuvius. For the administration of the
law in this country we have all of us, and with
reason, the profoundest admiration ; as for that
matter, also, we have for the wisdom and integrity
of our judges. There is one judge, however,
familiarly known on the other side of the Atlantic—
by name Judge LYNCH—that we often think of wist-
fully as inapplicable to our own state civilization. It
behoves the legislature, at any rate, seriously bo re-
consider the whole state of our criminal code, to the
end, if possible, of devising some more effectual
means than we have certainly yet contrived tc hit
upon for clearing away from the very midst of us
these most revolting and horrible abominations,

IT is less than a hundred years since a few humane
and patriotic Englishmen banded themselves toge-
ther with a determination to extinguish the slave ,
trade. Like many others who enter upon untried
undertakings, they had formed but a very inade-
quate idea of the magnitude of the work upon which
they had entered, and the extent of the difficulties
they would be required to surmount. In their
enthusiasm they imagined that the horrors of the
slave trade had only to be made known, and their .
countrymen would at once and unanimously deter-
mine that the trade in human flesh must cease to be
carried on. It was not, however, easy to make the
case known. Englishmen are so busy with their
own affairs that they have little time or thought to
give to any new complaint. And ignorance and in- '
difference were not the only enemies with which they
had to contend. No sooner did their case begin to
make some impression on the public mind than the
advocates of suppression found their arguments
directly opposed by those who had a reputation for
wisdom and prudence. Not only was the object
they had in view denounced as being utterly
unattainable, but their proceedings were condemned
as calculated to increase the miseries of those they
were attempting to relieve. It was argued that the
thirst for gain was such, and the facilities for obtain-
ing slaves so great, that no sensible person could
expect to stop the traffic. The only cours6 which
reasonable people could adopt was to endeavour to
regulate the traffic and to mitigate some of its evils.
It was contended—and with much truth—that the
attempts to suppress the traffic had greatly increased
the sufferings of the slaves. The horrors of the
middle passage were cbarged upon those who pro-
fessed to be actuated by special feelings of humanity,
and refused to recognise or maintain a trade which
they could not suppress, and which, but for their
misguided efforts, might be greatly mitigated. Thu
Pall Mall Gazettes of that period stigmatised the advo-
cates of suppression as " shriekers" and enthusiasts
who were destitute of common sense, and who in the
name of humanity committed the grossest• -sins,
against good taste. They were men and w'mnen,
who regarded the feelings of the blacks, but did not
hesitate to outrage the more refined feelings of the
whites. It was not a pleasant position to be thus
held up to the world as mistaken enthusiasts, who
were creating the evils they sought to remedy. We
can now scarcely recognise the fact that such was for
many years the position occupied by the prominent
leaders of the anti-slavery, movement. In the present
day we regard their names almost with veneration as
the men who have delivered the human race from
one of its greatest evils, as men who have establiished
their claim to wisdom and humanity, by the success-
ful results which have attended their efforts. But
the worn goes on as before ; we build the sepul-
chres of the prophets of the past generation, and
stone the prophets of the present. The wise and
prudent of the present day, in defending existing
evils, use.the same arguments, the_ sine epithets, as
were used by the wise and prudent of former gene-
rations in defending evils which have now been
happily exploded. It is not difficult to trace the