The Sun.
London, England, 1857-03-12 00:00:00

THE RECORDER OF FALMOUTH ON LSE
PRINCIPLES OF PUNISHMEA T.

1 The following remarks on the principles upon which
punishment should be regulated in the administration of
criminal justice are extracted from the charge to the
grand jury by the new Recorder of Falmouth, Mr. Cox.
After remarking upon the growth of crime in defiance of
all the remedies which had been relied upon for its pre-
vention, he said, " It was confidently asserted that edu-
cation was a cure for crime ; we have multiplied educa-
tion tenfold. More churches, better pastoral care, were
supposed to be the right remedies ; we have built new
churches by hundreds, and never were the clergy of all
denominations so zealous in the discharge of their duties.
Criminals were not properly disciplined, it was said; well,
we have !melt prisons and penitentiaries whose discipline
is perfect. If these were the preveetives or the remedies
for crime, there would have been a decrease of crime in
precise proportion to the increase of schools and peni-
tentiaries. But it has not been so ; on the contrary,
crime is increasing. What lesson should this teach us ?
That we have not yet learned the causes of crime,
and until we have come to some better agreement on
this tkere cau be no substantiarimprovement—our treat-
ment of it must be empirical. But this is a question for
the philosopher and for the statesman. We are engaged
in the administration, and not in the making of the la ;
that is the subject which concerns us here. It is fir the
punishment of crime that this court is assembled, and
that is the subject upon which it is my province to ad-
dress you. It is one of the means, and not the least im-
portant, by which we hope to prevent crime; and there
fore it is extremely desirable that, if it be possible, punish-
ment should be regulated by something like rule, and
that criminal courts should be guided by some recognised
principles in the awarding of it. I fear it is not always so.
Punishment is too often merely arbitrary. In two courts,
sitting side by side, very different degrees of punishment
are often awarded to offences almost identical in charac-
ter. The measure of punishment at the quarter sessions
is usually very different from the measure of punishment
at the assize. One judge is severe and another is lenient.
This should not be, for punishment should be as definite
as crime; the criminal in intention should know what he
has to fear if he carries his purpose into act. This variety
of treatment proves, I think, that, for the most part,
punishment is not regulated by any rule, and I have heard
It said by judges and magistrates that it is impossible to
lay down rules—that every case must be determined
by its own circumstances. I have had some expe-
rience for many years in criminal courts, and I have
been obliged to give much thought to the subject, and
these have led me to the conclusion that the punishment
of crime can be reduced to rule. Ido not mean an in-
flexible rule, like that formerly held that every forgery
should be punishable with death and every sheep-steal-
ing with transportation ; but that criminals, not crimes,
may be classified for the purpose of punishment, and
rules applied with such variations as the circumstances
of each case require. As it is my purpose, with your
assistance, to carry out these principles in the adminis-
tration of criminal justice in your borough, I am desir-
ous of stating them on this my first occasion for addres-
sing you, that they may be understood by all, and that
when sentences may be known, and that offenders may
know what they may expect if they bring themselves
into this court. For the purpose of punishment, crimi-
nals, as it appears to me, Aiay be divided into three
classes ; Ist, the Juvenile Criminal ; 2d, the Accidental
Criminal ' • 3d, the Professional and Incorrigible Cri-
minal. The juvenile criminal is almost always an
object for pity. He is usually a criminal from wan-
tonness, or ignorance, or evil example, and sometimes
even by the command of parents. Many of you
have children, and all of you have been children ;
you know how, with the best training, children will
err, and what could be expected of the children who
are cast upon our streets, uncared for, uninstructed
in their duties to God and man ? They have no friends,
and it is our duty to become their friends, and treat them
as we should treat our own children—if the offence is
through wantonness, give the boy a whipping and let
him go ; if it be the result of wickedness, send him to the
reformatory, where he may be taught his duty to God and
to his neighbours, the consequences of crime and the ad-
vantages of honesty. But this teaching cannot be given
in a few weeks or months. It must be the training of
years. Hence the necessity of pronouncing upon him a
sentence which may seem excessively severe, but which
must be understood as meaning only that he will be con-
fined to the discipline of a school, and not in the conta-
mination of a gaol. By the accidental criminal, I mean
all that class who commit crimes from sudden temptation
or passion, or impulse. It appears to me that such are en-
, titled to a merciful consideration, in deference to the
weaknesses of human nature. Unless their crimes have
been accompanied with circumstances of aggravation, as
violence, or deliberate forethought, or breach of trust, in
the measure of their punishment justice should be tem-
pered with mercy, and especially if it be a first offence, in
hope that the warning may not be lost ; but this mitiga-
tion should be more or less according to the amount of
aggravation in the offence. With the tbird class—the pro-
fessional criminals, in which I include not only those who
make crime a profession, but hardened offenders, on whom
punishment has been tried and failed, I would dealin quite
a different spirit. Mercy to them is cruelty to the pub-
lic. To turn them loose upon the society of which they
are the sworn enemies, whatever their promises of
amendment, seems to me to be madness. There are but
two ways of dealing with them—to imprison them for
life within our shores, or to banish them for-ever from
the community they are preying upon, and among whom
they are propagating crime. But Ido not believe that
imprisonment for life would be sanctioned by the huma-
nity of the country. There remains, then, wily banish-
ment, or transportation—call it which you please. Se-
verely punish them for a time here ; then let us send
them to a penal colony, where they have no inducements
to continue criminals, and every inducement to a new
life. But it is said that no colony will take them. Then
let us create new colonies for the purpose. With pos-

sessions in all parts of the globe, there must be room
enough for our annual five or six thousand of incorrig-
ibles ; and for the means—as we made penal colonies
I before successfully, surely so we can make them again.
I trust, therefore, it will be generally known in this bo-
rough that if I should be satisfied that any criminal tried
before me belongs to the class of professional thieves, I
shall inflict upon him the very highest punishment thelaw
will permit, whether it be his first detected offence or nut.
In the case of accidental criminals, I shall always be glad
to consider circumstances of mitigation ; and in the case
of juvenile offenders I shall either order summary
punishment by whipping, or give such a sentence as will
secure their transmission to a reformatory. But to enable
me to carry out these principles of punishment, it is ne-
cessary that I should know something of the prisoner's
antecedents. Admitting that these ought not to be allowed
to influence the trial, it has always appeared to me that,
after conviction, and for the purposes of punishment, the
inquiry is most important. I will therefore ask the ma-
gistracy and the police to assist me in this object by in-
vestigation into the previous history, habits, mode of
life, character, conduct, and means of obtaining his liveli-
hood, of every prisoner sent here for trial, so that they
may be taken into account when determining his sen-
tence. There is another subject ou which lam desirous
to address a few words to you. A recent statute has
empowered a summary conviction of small larcenies ; it
has worked well within its limits, but an evil has re-
sulted from it which was not anticipated ; prosecutors,
to save trouble—justices, to save expense, and prisoners,
to save themselves from shame and punishment, have
combined to push the act beyond its intention. Crimes
of much large* amount than the language descrlhes
are, by a contrivance, brought nominally within the
jurisdiction, and disposed of in a small room before
few witnesses, without the shame of a public and solemn
trial. I have no doubt that the forms of a court of jus-
tice are viewed with very great awe by the classes from
which criminals for the most part come. They fear the
shame of standing at the bar in the presence of their
friends and acquaintance, and witnessing the agony they
have brought on their families, far more than any punish-
ment the court can inflict. This fear, and the t xample
of it, is destroyed by a plea of guilty in a magistrate's
room, and, therefore, the act which permits it will do
great harm, if it is not strictly confined to its proper ob-
jects, very small larcenies indeed. For the same reason
these local courts of Quarter Sessions are so useful, be-
cause many a criminal, who would not care to be taken
to Bodinin and tried in a court where he does not see a
face he had ever seen before, would fear to be tried here,
where every eye that looks upon him with censure is
that of an acquaintance. And I hope before long that
instead of limiting the trials in these courts to the limit
of the borough, all prisoners committed within a circle
of ten or twelve miles round, will be sent for trial to the

Borough Sessions, wherethe offence and its punishments
may be seen aad known by all those who form the public,
which alone they recognise and fear. So all of us giving
help according to our various means, we may hops, with
the bleesing of God, to see this awful tide of crime turned,
and our country purged of the terrible plague-spot that
rebukes our pride and shames our boasted civilisation."