The Sun.
London, England, 1828-04-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

We yesterday, in noticing a case lately tried
at the Denbighshire Assizes, alluded to the bar-
barous state in which the Penal Law of England
now is. The present Assize furnish abundance
of cases of a similar character ; and, indeed, it is
hardly possible to take up a paper in which in-
stances are not to be found of absurd invasions,
by which men, of whose guilt there cannot be a
doubt, are allowed to escape without punishment.
—The following (copied, probably, from some
London Print) appears in The Essex Herald
of yesterday :
" Mr, Peel's law reforms appear to have effected
but little good with regard to the preventing the-
acquittal of prisoners upon technical quibbles. At
the 'Warwick Assizes, in the course of one day, four;
out of five prisoners were acquitted, though there.
could be no doubt of their guilt. As an instance,
we may mention the following case :—A man was
indicted for stealing four live fowls in the county ‘if
Warwick. The fowls were first stolen in the county
of Stafford, but the prisoner was taken, with the
fowls in his possession, in the county ofWarwick
and, as the law holds that a fresh felony is committej
in every county into which stolen property has ly?co
carried, of course the man was properly tried at tho
Warwieltassizes. The fowls, however, when found
upon the prisoner, were dead ; therefore, the
Learned Judge (Mr, Justice liolre,vd) held that he
been indicted simply for
could not be found guilty of stealing live fowls its
he still could not have been ~Ntlceiarlivsn-gickfoshire. If he had
convic-
ted,
inasmuch, as in the famous duck cast, it was
decided that dead ducks were not ducks at all, or,
at least, were not ducks ; and of course, the same
reasoning would apply to dead fowls."
All the difficulties which are thus forced on the
public attention might be easily obviated, were a
very slight amount of reflection brought to the
work of legislation. Let us suppose that the
Legislature wish, by penal sanctions, to of orb.
protection to property, The right of property
may be infringed on in a variety of ways. Ani-•
orals belonging to a man may be takers
away by force or by stealth, may be in-
tentionally killed or injured. Inanimate
property may also be taken forcibly or b'
stealth, or intentionally destroyed or injured.
With respect to the taking property by force, it
is not necessary that there should be a.law de-
nouncing a punishment for every object—one
for a horse, one for a cow, one for a sheep or a
goat, one for a piece of furniture, one for a
piece of cloth, The simple prohibition to take:
property by force, necessarily includes every de-
scription of property; and if it be wished to
graduate the punishment according to value, then
value may regulate the quality of the penal,
sanction. In like manner, the Legislature may
go to work with taking property by stealth,
without having recourse to a specification, of 01:e
jects, and going through the whole range of ani-
mate and inanimate property known to commeece.
To protect property from intentional destruction
or injury, the Legislature has only to proceed
on a similar principle. In tile case of animate
property, the intentional killing, or intentional
injuring, may be deemed a higher offence than.
the intentional destruction or injury of inenimate
property. But the Legislature can never succeed
in specifying all the means by which life may be
taken away or affected, and it is not necessary
that it should. It is sufficient to declare, that
the intentionally taking away the life, or the in-
tentionally injuring in such a way as to destroy
the value of an animal, shall be punishable. A
man may poison the water which he knows a
horse or cow or dog will drink, He may shut
up an animal in an inclosed space, with charcoal,
or some substance calculated to render the air
unfit for respiration. He may, indeed, pur-
posely render the air mephitic in a variety of
ways. He may expose animals to the bite
or sting of a poisonous animal, in the certainty
or hope of their being bitten or stung. If all
the cases in all the criminal records of Europe
were to be examined, with a view to a correct
specification of the various modes by which life
may be taken away or seriously injured, a per-
son possessed of the least ingenuity Might, im-
mediately after the promulgation of the specifie
cation, hit on a hundred other modes of destruc-
tion equally effectual. The idea is visionary of
reaching crimes, not by generals, but by parti-
culars. But if the simply taking away life, or
:Attempting to take away life intentionally—or
the injuring, or attempting to injure intentionally,
were to be prohibited, then all that it would he
necessary to establish would be—first, the fact
of killing or destroying, then that the animal
was of a certain value ; and the intention would,
of course, be a matter of inference or evidence.
in the case of the man acquitted on account of
the fowls being dead when found upon him,
though they were live when stolen in another
county, of what earthly consequence was it, with
regard either to the guilt of the prisoner or the
fixing the act for whiCh he is tried, so as to
enable him to prepare for his defence, whether
the fowls were live or dead ? Eels are to be
found alive at every fishmonger's. A man may
run off with a basketfull of them, and make
his way through two or three juridictions, be-
fore they are fairly dead—nay, it may not be ease
to ascertain the fact without skinning the eel,
when, if there he any life in it, symptoms will be-
shown. But it is enough that fowls or eels are
etolen at a particular time or place, without
specifyingtake a
dictments rather inconvenient to a prisoner, as
whetherlat theylatitude as
Scotch
live or dead. The
to the time in their in-
far as regards alibi. The prosecutor might as
well be obliged to describe every feather in the
fowls, the length of the feet or heads ; to state
birththeir
as
faanrdasptairieentage, by father as well as
former
can be know', or
onjectured ; the number of eggs they have laid,
the quantity of corn they have devoured tho
space of their lives.
Living or dead, the fowl;
c
and the taking them ought r
were property ;to ie
the head of° '
punishable under taking away pro-
perty by stealth. The description of the place
.hence taken, the
ftounime when or the place where
was d o 1
the property
n tee prisoner, are all
that. Is necessary the prisoner should know, to
enable him to meet the charge, in order that be
„Thy be able to prove an alibi, or his right to
possession, or circumstances establishing his
bona fide belief that he had a right. The
defendant may prove that the property alleged to
have been tak-
en or found on him, or in his pos-
session, was his own, or that of some other
person who authorized him to take it, and on the
goodness of whose title he relied, and various
i)ther circumstances, important to the determining
the character of his conduct ; but these eireurn-
tiinces are matter for investigation during the trial;
nothing more need be stated in the charge/than
what we have specified. The distinctions of' the
English Lawyers are useless, or rather mis-
chievous, to all but themselves. It is useless or
mischievous to lay down rules, the meaning of
which can neither be known to the owner of pro-
peny nor to the person who speculates on taking
-
it, but is discovered by Lawyers after subtle dis-
cussions. Law is either a rule, or it is not ; if
it be a rule, it ought to be such as can be