The Sun. — 1865-12-27 (London, England)

POST. —The Report of the Commission on Capital Punishment is now before us. It recommends that the punishment of death be retained for all murders deliberately committed with express malice aforethought—such malice to be found as a fact by the jury—and also in cases of treason as distinguished from treason-felony. In the case of murder being committed in perpetrating, or in the attempt to perpetrate, or to escape after having perpetrated, arson, rape, burglary, robbery, piracy, or murder, the punishment of death is also recommended to be retained. In other cases of murder, such as those in which, although not committed after positive and evident premeditation, the law infers or assumes general malice, through the absence of legal provocation, the punishment suggested is penal servitude for life, or for a term not less than seven years, according to the discretion of the court. With reference to the particular species of murder known as infanticide, which the present law does not distinguish from murder generally, thereby apparently causing repeated failures of justice, the commissioners recommend that to inflict grievous bodily harm or serious injury upon an infant, either during its birth or within seven days afterwards, shall bo constituted an offence at law punishable with penal servitude or imprisonment at the discretion of the court. In such case no proof of the child having been born alive should be required. Persons should not be convicted of concealment of birth upon an indictment for childmurder, but the offence should be tried upon a separate indictment of its own. In neither of these cases should the accused be acquitted if, instead of the Crime charged, the facts should be found to amount to murder or manslaughter. The power of ordering sentence of death to be recorded should be restored to the judges. The report recommends that executions should not be public, but private— within the precincts of the prison—such regulations being made as would prevent abuse and satisfy the public that the law had been carried out. With reference to the expediency of allowing an appeal ou matters of fact to a court of law in criminal cases ; to the mode in which the Crown is advised to exercise the prerogative of mercy by the Home Secretary ; and the preseht state of the law as to the nature and degree of insanity which is held to relieve the accused from penal servitude in criminal cases, the commissioners observe that these difficult questions are not confined to capital offences only, but pervade the whole administration of the criminal law, and therefore require a more general and comprehensive treatment than the terms of the commission under which they act will admit. They confine themselves therefore to the suggestion that these important points are deserving of further investigation. Such, in substance, are the recommendations of the report. The commissioners forbear to enter upon a discussion as to the expediency of the abolition of capital punishment, considered in the abstract. On this point differences of opinion exist among them ; but they are unanimous in thinking that the alterations stated above should be made in the present law.  Mn.