The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-11 00:00:00

have formed as reasonable an excuse for the
postponement of the revision of the penal code as
any which our own Ministry and Parliament could
offer to the country on the score of the pressing
importance of the Reform Bill. Let it be
granted, however, that the Reform Bill alone
stood in the way of the intended amelioration of
the law ; it would then appear that the accident
of that Bill not having been carried before now
alone prevents the offences which we have men-
tioned from being no longer capital. Are Mi-
nisters, then, justified in executing laws which,
but for the peculiar circumstances in which this
country has during the last year been placed,
must before this time have been erased from the
Statute-book for ever ? Surely no reasonable
person will think so, especially when it is con-
sidered that the interposition of the Royal pre-
rogative of mercy is as much a legal act as the
execution of bad laws, while it is infinitely
more becoming the character of a just and en-
lightened Government. It is a curious circum-
stance that the last notice of Mr. Ewart's motion,
that which appeared a few days ago, contained
only two of the offences which it previously corn•
prised. The offence of cattle-stealing was omitted.
This seemed strange enough, but it appeared
still more so when it was coupled with the cir-
cumstance of a cattle-stealer being selected out
of a great number of capital convicts for the
extreme penalty of the law. The coincidence,
however it originated, was at all events very
singular. Since writing the above we have re-
ceived information of a respite having arrived
for Henry Wells, the cattle-stealer; and, if
our information be authentic, we presume that
the King's advisers have, upon reconsideration,
been convinced that there are modes of punish-
ment which, whether in the way of coercion or
example, can be as as effective in preventing the
crime of cattle-stealing as the taking the blood
of the offender, if not a great deal more so. But
there is no reasoning which can lead them to this
conclusion which ought not also to convince them
that the stealing of letters from the Post-office
might he as effectually repressed by transportation
for life, imprisonment to hard labour, or some
other punishment of restraint and example known
to our law, as by the barbarous spectacle which
the horrid tragedy of the scaffold presents.
The principal argument relied upon by
Lord Brougham, Sir James Mackintosh,
and other strenuous opposers of Sir Robert
Peel's Forgery Bill, in 1830, was the ineffi-
cacy of the punishment of death as applied
to that offence, and they argued, upon data
which could not be disputed, that the excessive
severity of the law in a great measure defeated
its own object, and, instead of effectually pro-
tecting property from that sort of depredation,
rendered it insecure. In support of that opinion
they had the recorded sentiments of 1,000
bankers—the persons the most interested in the
detection and punishment of forgery--besides
the numerous petitions of clergymen, Magis-
trates, merchants, members of the profession of
the law—in short, the representatives of the
commerce, the opulence, the education, and in-
telligence of the country. Now, forgery, whether
in a moral, a social, or commercial point of view,
is quite as bad an offence as stealing letters from
the Post-office. The former is a theft of more
ingenuity than the latter—but not the less
dangerous. We call it a theft—though, legally
speaking, it is a fraud ; but the end which the
forger has in view is the same with that of the

thief, though the means are different. A great
many forgers escape without any punishment
whatever, because people who feel the penalty of
death to be too heavy for the offence avoid prose-
cuting, lest they should bring upon their own
consciences the guilt of blood : others, whose
guilt admits ofno reasonable doubt, are acquitted,
because Juries often take -that course which is
more favourable to life than remarkable for any
strict adherence to the legal deductions of evi-
dence. So it happens that, for one offender in
this way who suffers an extreme punishment,
many suffer none whatever. It is so with the
offence of stealing letters—the sanguinary law is
no protection to the public, but the reverse. An
offender is now and then convicted and hanged ;
but this offence does not decrease, because many
dishonest persons who commit this crime hope to
be as fortunate as others, who have either not
been prosecuted, or have escaped conviction upon
a trial, contrary to all expectation, in consequence
of the natural repugnance of Juries to be instru-
mental to the vengeance of laws that will have no
compensation for wrong but a sacrifice of blood.
Rightly was it said by Mr. Fowell Buxton, in
his admirable speech upon the criminal law, in
the year 1821—" Whence, I ask, the lethargy,
the supineness, the indifference to the prevention
of crime, which marks our system ? Here is the
cause :—We rest our hopes on the hangman,
and in this vain and deceitful confidence in the
ultimate punishment of crime forget the very first
of our duties—its prevention."—Morn. Herald.

The lesson which was read in the House of
Commons on Thursday night, on the subject of
our foreign relations—more especially our rela-
tions with Portugal—will not, we trust, be lost,
either on the Opposition, on the country, or on
the Ministry. The Opposition must see and
hear, from its triumphant result in favour of Mi-
nisters—if they have either eyes to see or ears
to hear—that they form a very despicable mino-
rity in the representation—the country must
now be convinced that whatever the question
may be which is to be brought forward by the

Opposition, its only object is to delay the pro-
gress of the Reform Bill through the House of
Commons, and by delaying it to sicken the public
of it—and, finally, his Majesty's Ministers must
learn from it, if they had not previously learned
it from other occurrences, that. the enemy op-
posed to them does not deal in fair play—that
the bandying of compliments ought to cease—
and that henceforward they they must not only

give up the suaviler in mod°, as an unnecessary
ingredient in Parliamentary practice, but adopt
the fortiter in re with the courage and determi-
nation of men who have all to lose, and all to
gain, by the conduct which they ought to pur-
sue. Their motto ought to be—
" Comeon—and damned be he who first cries hold, enough !"
And let them not fear that they will be ably sup-
ported. The whole power of the country—m-
tellectual, moral, and physical—is with them ;
and what ought they to think of themselves, or
what will the country think of them, if they
flinch from the fight ?—Morning Advertiser.
The Lord Chancellor seems to be hi great
dudgeon with his colleagues On account of the
reserve they have maintained towards him, since
the passing of the Bankruptcy Court Act, upon the
interesting subject of his diminished emoluments.
This Act, it will be recollected, passed the
House of Commons in the dog-days, after a
most oppressive and exhausting session, and the
g •
uestion of compensation to the Lord Chan-
cellor for the fees it abstracted from his official
emoluments was postponed until a more conve-

. . -
nient season. That none of his colleagues have