Star.
London, England, 1831-06-11 00:00:00

PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

Extract from the Speech of I. Sydney Taylor, A. M. in se-
conding:the Resolution moved by Dr. Lushington, at a
Public Meeting held at Exeter Hall, Monday, May 30.
After making some excellent preliminary observations,
Mr. Sydney Taylor proceeded to say—" It is," as Mr. Jus-
tice Blackstone remarks, ;‘ a kind of quackery in Govern.
meat to apply the same universal remedy—the whinturn
supptioluns to every case of difficulty. It is, it must be
owned, much easier to extirpate than to amend mankind, yet
that magistrate must be esteemed both a weak and cruel surgeon
who cuts offevery limb, which, thro' ignorance or indolence be
will not attempt to cure." There have been unfortunately
for the character of English justice, too many of those weak
and cruel quacks, of whom Blackstone speaks, engaged, from
time to time, in the delicate and difficult task of criminal
legislation. They have certainly, like quacks in the medical
profession, shown that it is much easier to extirpate than to
amend mankind. They have indulged their ease, and endea-
voured to conceal their ignorance by neglecting the curative
process entirely, and making a liberal use of the exterminating
knife. For ages past, multitudes, whose offences were of
inferior degrees of guilt, end who, under the treatment of a
judicious penal regimen, would have been restored to moral
health, and have become ;good and useful members of so.
ciety, have perished the pitied victims of their remorseless
ignorance and unscientific butchery.—The grave has covered
the offences of their victims ; but what mountains can cover
the crimes of the inhuman legislators! Those crimes stand
rubric against their memories in the volumes of our penal
laws—laws written not whir ink, but with blood, as if the
law-makers had bccn emulous of the execrable fame of
Draw, whose cnsanguined laws the Athenians erased from
the books of their republic, but saved his name from ob-
livion, to float it as a warning down the stream of an odious
Immortality!
Do I colour the description of the sanguinary nature of the
English laws too highly ? Blackstone says, "itis a me-
lancholy truth that, among the variety of actions that men
are daily liable to commit, no less than 100 have been de-
clared by Act of Parliament. to be felonies worthy of instant
death." Since his time the number has been more than
doubled; and our revenue lam at one time—as stated by
Lord Holland, in the House of bowls, in the year 1810—
contained no less than 75 capital enactments, tire most of
which had become obsolete, through their odious ,and im.
practicable severity.
At one period the rage for enacting capital punishments
went so far in this Christian land that almost every country
gentleman, who could distinguish himself in Parliament in
no other way, was sure to try his hand at a new felony, with.
out benefit of Clergy. It was in allusion to this custom that
Edmund Burke sarcastically, but truly, observed that, " if
a country gentleman could obtain no other favour from the
government, he was sure to be accommodated with a new
felony, without benefig of Clergy." He tells us that
having, on one occasion, gone into a ;committee-room,
where, I think, ha rays but the Chairman, one Mem-
ber, and the Cl,rk, were busily engaged in trans-
acting business, with papers before them, he was in-
formed, as a reason why there was no necessity for •
greater attendance, that they were only preparing a bill to
enact a new felony, without benefit of Clergy 1 I know not
to what lengths that exterminating spirit would have gone,
if it had not been for the appearance in the House of Com-
mons of that man, the energetic arm of whose virtue arrested
the destructive machine of criminal legislation, which, like
the rolling car of the Indian Moloch, found new victims to
crush beneath its wheels at every new impulse which it re-
ceived from the ministers of its cruelty—a man, of whose
enlightened benevolence the legislature of England was too
soon deprived, but whose virtuous example can never be lost
—over whose grave Mercy weeps, amid the unwithering gar-
lands which humanity has strown on the repose of her bene-
factor—the amiable, the great, the lamented ROMILLT.

It Is true that, since the time when Sir Samuel Romilly
commenced his humane and wise innovations on the crimi.
nal laws, several capital Statutes, which, for the excessive
disproportion of the penalty to the offence, had become ob-
solete, have been lopped cff ; but scarcely in a single in-
stance has the criminal code been purified from any but
those obsolete enacumnts which were hideous in appearance,
but had become harmless, in fact, being paralyzed by pub.
lic opinion, and, like fangless serpents, having no longer the
power to inject that venom whose touch is death. If,
as I said, the Legislature have the right, as well as the
power, to take away human life, whether the resort to
that terrible power be intended to prevent a repetition
of the offence by the culprit, or to deter others
by his example—if the sante end can be attained by means
equally efficacious, which do not involve the destruction of
life, no man, who does not feel a pleasure in shedding blood,
for its own sake, or whose heart has not been rendered ob.
durate by the influence of the system which he upholds, will
venture to assert that death ought to be inflicted—that
punishment with which the Almighty forbore to strike the
first murderer, leaving him to become a mole fearful exam.
plc to men, by the agonies of an accusing conscience, and
the desolation of a living curse, ought not surely to be
lightly inflicted by weak, fallible, sinful man, sitting in
judgment on his guilty brother. I have shown that the
criminal laws of England are not temperate. l shall now
prove that they are not moral, and must, consequently, have
the dangerous effnt of giving wrong notions of the de-
grees of guilt, and confounding the moral perceptions of the
people—the worst lesson that legislators can teach man.
kind. It will be allowed by all Christian, and, indeed,
by all civilized, people, that every system of justice
which is not founded in morality, has a false foundation.—
Morality, whether its principles be taught us by the light of
nature, improved by cultivr.ted reason, or by tire clearersight
of sealed religion, distinguishes offences as of different de-
grees of moral guilt, which the laws of England confound by
the denunciation of the one merciless punishment. Can the
English system of criminal law, then, have its foundation in
morality ? if so, there is • morality which teaches what Sir
Robert Peel does, in his " amended law"—that the offence
of stealing five pounds in a dwelling-house is equal to the
most cruel spoliation of the most precious of the gifts of
Gon, which is the life of man—that the burning of a heap
of straw or bean-stalks, in a field remote from any dwelling,
is not inferior in crime to the burning a family in their
beds—that to steal a horse or a sheep is quite as cri-
minal as to maliciously slay the rider or the shepherd—
that to fabricate a one-pound promissory note is not leas
atrocious than to assassinate a Bank Director—that to

counterfeit the King's image and superscription on a
piece of gold or silver coin, is as malignant and dan-
gerous • crime as to compass the death of the King, or to
rebelliously attempt to dis,olve into the chaos of savage
anarchy all the elements of civil existence - for all these
offences are equally punishable by the extinction of
the offender. If there be a code of morality which teaches
the doctrines proclaimed in Sir Robert Peel's " amended"
legislation, where is it to be found—in what place of educe-
tion is it taught ? Has the light of nature disclosed it ? lies
it been revealed in the authentic word of OOD ? The un-
perverted reason—the natural conscience of man revolts at
the monstrous confusion of principles which such a sys-
tem of " wild justice' displays, and religion, while she
pours upon the mind the clear light of divine instruction,
breaks in pieces upon the altars of a merciful dispensation,
the tablets of sanguinary law. But our " amended" code
of criminal law visits with mild punishment some atrocious
offences which are far more heinous than the ordinary vio-
lations of vulgar property, tor which the two unfortunate
criminals were strangled on the scaffold the other morning
—and even some acts that inflict the most deadly injury,
and produce irreparable affliction, meet with no punishment
whatever.

e a • e
Again, the man, who, in the grossest violation of the con•
6dence of friendship and the rights of hospitality, plunders
his friend of that jewel of domestic peace which is above the
price of rubies—who tuns the ornamvnt and the solace of
his life into his disgrace and affliction—who makes his
home desolate and his children worse than mothetless, in-
curs no punishment whatever; while the man who steals to
the amount of 51 in his dwelling house, of that metal which
our legislators deem to be more precious than human
oloud, must expiate his offence beneath the sword of
the inexorable law. It is hence, and from other in
stances that I could adduce, rather evident that our
criminal laws are the work of the rich and great, who,
while they affected more than the indignation of the
loftiest virtue against the offences into which the poor man
is likely to fall, have either altogether overlooked or been
exceedingly lenient to such crimes as their own "older^ are
but too prune to commit; therefore, the thief of a few shil-
-1 hogs, or the forger of a one-pound note, was sent to the
gibbet,but the fashionable gambler,who, by the basest MU of
' circumvention, plunders families of their fortune, and chil-
dren of their inheritance, may have the agonies of human
despair—the crime of suicide—the miseries of destitute wi-
dos hood and unprotected orphanage—to answer for before
a higher tribunal, but the lightnings of our criniisial Jaw
pass him by to strike and exterminate the diebortest savant,

who pilfers a small portion of Ms ill-gotten wealth. Such is
the morality of the system !

I hope those who take an interest in the reformation of
morals among ourselves, will exert their influence and abi-
lities so as not to allow another session of Parliament to pan
away without something being done to introduce substantial
improvement and amelioration into our own code of criminal
laws. In this struggle, if there is much to be encountered,
there is much to be gained. If the conflict be severe, the
trophies are glorious—you engage in it to give new and per-
manent and inestimable advantages to civilization—to pro-
mote the moral and social welfare of the people—to give to
power its best security, by placing it on the imperishable
foundation of enlightened justice—to vanquish and wrest
from legislative barbarism the weapons of human extermi-
nation, and lay them at the feet of rejoicing humanity.

THEIR MAJESTIES.

WINDSOR—FaiDAr.

The principal Officers of the Cavalry and Infantry
regiments stationed here had the honour of dining with their
Majesties yesterday evening, by invitation.
The Earl of Munster and Lord Frederick Fitz-
clarence arrived at the Castle yesterday evening, and also
joined the Royal party at dinner.
The carriages and saddle-horses were ordered to
be in readiness at half-past two this afternoon, when their
Majesties and suite proceeded to take their usual airing—the
King ins close carriage, and the Queen on horseback.
The Earl of Niunater and Lord Frederick Fitz-
clarence left the Castle this forenoon, in one of the Royal
carriages, and proceeded to the tliltary College at Sand.
hunt. After examining the young Cadets, who were to pass
In review before them, their Lordships were to dine with Lord
Edward Paget, the Governor, with whom they intended pas-
sing a day or two.
Her Highness the Duchess of Cambridge was to
leave Hanover yesterday, the 9th inst. and is expected to ar-
rive at Cambridge House, Piccadilly, on Tuesday next, the
14th instant.