The Sun.
London, England, 1856-06-11 00:00:00

nities. They might judge of the nature of those importu-
nities by the petitiod which had been recently printed,
and was now going about ter signatures, fOr obtaining a
remission of the sentence passed upon a notorious criminal.
Tnis petition was accompanied by a letter from Mr. Hera.
path, chemist, t. which he did not attach much impor-
tance, for unless he was greatly misinformed that gentles
man in one particular case went to his right hon. friend
(Mr. Walpole), when he was Secretary of State, impor-
tuning him to stay an execution, assuring him that a cer-
tain poison had not been administered, while at that very
hour the criminal was confessing that he used it. He
was anxious to relieve the Secretary of State from those
importunities. Formerly executions were left in the
hands of the sheriffs in the country, but in Landon the
custom was for the Recorder to report to the Sovereign
the case of every criminal condemned to execution, and.
take the royal pleasure upon it. He would suggest that
some such course should be again adopted, that the Re-
corder should make his report, that the judge who tried
the case, and the Chief Justices of the Queen's Bench
and Common Pleas together with the Lord Chancellor,
should be consulted if any fresh evidence should be
br night forward after passing the sentence, and that
they should decide whether there were any grounds for
extending the royal mercy. Of course he would not
fetter the prerogative of the Crown. The Crown might
pardon whom it pleased, but he would not leave the
matter where it was without some more effective and
better•organised machinery which should insure the
revision of the sentence, if necessary ; and if not, that
it should be carried into effect. (Hear.)
Mr. BLAKEMORE supported the motion, and re-
ferred to a case in which two persons had been con-
demned for murder in Wales, one of whom had been
proved to be innocent, and had been pardoned.
Sir G. GREY having had occasion three or four times
already to state the views of the Government on this
subject of the punishment of death, in reply to his hon.
friend, he was net now in a position to offer any new
argument as against the motion now brought forward,
and must express his hope that for the sake of that pro-
tection which it was essential that the law and the exe-
cetion of the law should throw around society and human
life the house would again reject it. The present motion
was slightly at variance with those which had formerly
been submitted. On former occasions his hon. friend had
either submitted a resolution declaring the expediency of
abolishing capital punishment, or asked for leave to bring
in a bill to accomplish that object. In the present in-
stance, the notice, as it was originally given, was in
similar terms; but within the last few days, influenced no
doubt by circumstances that had already occurred, it had
been altered, and now what the house wan asked to do
was to consent to the appointment of a select commit-
tee to inquire into the operation of the law imposing
the punishment of death. He however could see but lit-
tle substantial difference between thisand the former
mo-
tions. By his speech his hon. friend asked the house in
express terms to consent to the abolition of the punish-
ment of death, and to substitute a milder, and as he
called it a less cruel, punishment. If, therefore, the house
consented to the appointment of the committee, coupling
the motion with his hon. friend's speech, they would be
in effect expressingan opinion that it was expedient to
discontinue the punishment of death altogether. That
he thought would be a very dangerous conclusion for the
house to come to. On one point he entirely agreed with
les hon. friend. His hon. friend said that a preliminary
objection was entertained against the motion on theo-
lo„eical grounds, and that there were those who held
that the Divine law was imperative on the subject of
tee infliction of the pecaity of death fir the crime of
murder. He (Sir G Grey a did not go the length of
those who held that doctrine, but neither, on the other
hand, could he agree with those who asserted that the
panishrnent of death, established by any civil government
iu any civil state, was contrary to the law of God as
contained in the New Testament, and he must ask his
hon. friend when he discarded the theological ground,
and tailed upon the house to consider the question on
the ground of expediency, to dismiss the aid he would
draw from the petition he bad required to be read at the
table, wherein the petitioners asserted broadly that it
was contrary to the Gospel to tele!" away the life of a
man under any circumstances. A great number of peti-
tions had doubtless been presented that day in favour of
his hon. friend's motion, while none had been presented
against it. In ordinary cases a strong inference might
be drawn from that circumstance, that public opinion
ran in the direction indicated by the prayers of the pe-
titioners. But that opinioncould not be maintained when
it was recollected that these petitions were got up by an
organised system—that they were stereotyped, as it were,
being in the same terms, honestly expressing the
opinions of those who signed them, unquestionably, but
in no way indicating the current of public opinion; be.
cause such was the feeling in men's minds that, however
they might object to the abolition of capital punishment
in cases of murder, they would naturally abstain from
petitioning in favour of its retention. If a person was
suspected of a treacherous murder, the sympathy of the
public was with the law, and against the supposed cri-
minal ; bait the moment he was convicted and sentenced,
there were always numbers of persons whose sympathies
ware immediately transferred to the prisoner, whom they
looked upon as an object deserving of commiseration,
ani far the remission of whose sentence they spared no
exertion. (Hear, hear.) And this feeling in favour of
convicted criminals was not confined tee cases where
the capital sentence was pronounced, but, as they had
seen, was frequently extended to those who were
oaderneed to punishments of a secondary nature,
wane on the other hand they never knew of a case
where persons came forward to petition the Crown
net to extend its mercy to a criminal, or to pray
for the infliction of a severer sentence. His hon.
friend (Mr. Ha !field) was mistaken if he supposed that
those great men he referred to, Sir S. Romily, Sir R.
Peel, and others, who had exerted tbemselves to human-
ise our criminal law, were in favour of the removal of the
punishment of death from the category of criminal pun-
ishments. They abolished the extreme penalty in refer-
ence to a great number of crimes, but they retained it in
one few. The house was now dealing with the question
of rapitat punishment as it now existed, not as applying,
as formerly, tee a great variety of crimes, but as applying
to murder. And when his hon. friend (Mr. Ewait) asked
the house to declare its opinion that criminals convicted
of murder should not suffer death, he based the issue on
the ground of expediency. To justify the retention of any
punishment his hon. friend contended it was necessary to
show that it was effeetive for the repression of crime- r
that it was equal, and that it was revocable if it should
turn out that conviction was wrong. With regard to the
efficiency of the punishment for the repression of crime he
was bound to express his opinion, confirmed as it was by
statistical records and the conviction which rested upon
every man's mind, that the punishment of death was
that which men looked upon with greater dread than any
other, and that was more effectual than any other in re-
pressing crime. (Hear.) As his boo, friend hal not based
his arguments on statistics, he (Sir G. Grey) bad no oc-
casion, as he had on former occasions, to refer to statis-
tics to refute therm lie might, however, say in answer
to the general statement, that while all those crimes in
which the capital punishment had been abolished, had
decreased since the abolition, the crime of murder, for
which the punishment of death was still retained, bad
increased; that the result of the official statistics in his
hands was directly the reverse. The fact was directly
opposite to the statement. Burglary and other crimes
had increased, while that of murder had decreased, not-
withstanding the increase of population, and if any argu-
ment were to be derived from statistic?, it was that the
punishment of death deterred from murder. As regarded
executions of women for murder, he observed that it
wee not the case that they had been systematically
raaoited. With respect to the uncertainty of this punish-
ment, it was an objection which applied equally to all
punishments. The law allowed a discretion to judges
in the degree ',of punishment, though the crime might
legally be :the same in the cases which were punishable
by transportation. If by certainty of punishment was
meant a uniform inflicting of the same punishment for the
same crime, it would often lead, even in cases which were
almost identical with murder, to great injustice • and
there were cases in which the clemency of the drown
might properly be exercised. With reference to cer-
tainty, tie would allude to what had been said with re-
gard to juries, judges, and the power vested in the Se-
cretary of State. It was goingatoo far to say that juries
refused to convict in clear cases on account of the neces-
sity of capital punishment ; and if there were such cases,
they were exceedingly rare. However, it might influ-
ence the minds of juries in favour of the prisoners, and
it might perhaps act in the returning of verdicts of man-
slaughter instead of murder; but in these cases the
eery punishment followed which his hon. friend wished
to supply to all cases of murder, namely, penal servitude
for life. As regarded judges he did not think the remark
of his hon, friend on the emotion shown by judges in
sentencing prisoners was to be attributed to anything
hut the natural feeling which a man must experience in
the perfermance of that duty. With regard to the duty
of the Secretary of State in these cases no doubt it was
at times painful and onerous, and there was nothing
which required more care and attention than the exami-
nation of such cases, but in most of those cases the evi-
dence was so clear, the objections being usually made on
philanthropic grounds alone, that the duty became com•
paratively easy. It was now the custom for the judge
to report to the Hume Office on the evidence in cases in
which he doubted whether the crime amounted to more
than manslaughter, and it became then a matter for the
consideration of the Home Department, and this custom
was facilitated by the alteration of the law which caused
the sentence being put into execution at a more
distant period than formerly, when it followed the
next day efter sentence. At the same time there were
cases in which some deference must be paid to public
opinion, so as to prevent sympathy being felt rather for
the criminal than for the vindication of the law. If the
member for Surrey could devise any plan to relieve the
Secretary cif State from this duty, he would canfer a great
favour on the holder of the office, but it was to be feared
that it would not be pessible- to substitute any other tri•
b inn] for that which now existed. His hon. friend's argu-
ment with regard to murders by poison seemed to him to
ba fallacious, for it wail clear that the advance of cliental.-

cal science bad of late-years led to greater facilities for
the detection df 'that crime. With regard to the example
of foreiLn nomad*, his lion friend had adduced no argu-
ment to show'that their practice was more advantageous
than that of this country ; and as he (Sir G. Grey) be-
lieved that no Punishment was so effiCient to deter men
from crime, he trusted the house would join with him in
re d,ting this motion.
• Mr. LIDDELL armed that it was not easy to show
t',at the pucishment of death was not a preven iVe to
crime. Although of late years great efforts had been
mule in the direction of reformation of criminals, c.iuld
it he said that it was possible that even such a system
wati.so sufficient to turn aside the current of human pas-
sion as to induce the relaxation of the system of puoish-
merit which had hitherto existed. (The hon. member
hero met with AO munch opposition to his proceeding, that
ho ahruptlV sat down.)
Mr. BROTLIERTOII urged that the puniohmeut of f