The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1882-05-13 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT BILL.  Mr. J. Pease moved the second reading of this Bill. On previous occasions he had proposed the total abolition of the punishment of death, but in the present state of public feeling, though he believed it was improving in this respect, there was no use in trying to promote a Bill for the total and immediate repeal of capital punishment. The circumstances in which they were met that day would be very much against it, for a colleague, whose loss they all so much deplored, had been removed from amongst them, not by the ordinary laws of nature, but by a most cold•blooded and ferocious murder; and they felt that the greatest penalty that could be inflicted upon the murderers ought to be inflicted. (Hear, hear.) It was not for him to discuss whether death, or penal servitude for life, was the greater. He confined himself to proposing that, in accordance with the view taken by the Royal Commission that sat on the subject, and with the opinion pretty generally expressed last year on both sides of the House, the crime of murder should be defined in two degrees—premeditated and unpremeditated—the first including all those cases in which the prerogative of mercy was never exercised, and the other those in which it was very generally exercised. He proposed that it should be left in the hands of the jury to find the degree. He did not interfere in any way with the exercise of the Royal prerogative of mercy, though he believed, If this Bill were passed, there would be leas frequent occasions for it.  Sir E. Wilmot seconded the motion. He cordially agreed with the opening observations of Mr. Pease respecting the inopportuneness at the present time of any proposal for the abolition of capital punishment. The system proposed in the Bill had been adopted with great success in the United States.  In the discuasion which followed,, Mr. Cropper, Mr. Warton, Mr. Mellor, Sir G. Campbell, Mr. Hopwood, and Mr. Newdegate took part.  The Attorney-General thought the hon. member who brought forward this Bill had done good service, but he very much doubted whether the Bill would accomplish the object Mr. Pease had in view. He pointed out that the Bill did not deal with manslaughter and its common law definition, and that if this measure passed homicide would henceforth have either to be ranked as manslaughter, which was not murder, or to be adjudged as murder from premeditated malice or murder without premeditation, while at the same time something different from manslaughter as defined by the common law. In fact, they were met by a host of legal difficulties. This Bill could never be accepted by the House in its terms, and he heard it could not be sufficiently altered in Committee to make it satisfactory. In the absence of the Home Secretary, who had had the subject under consideration, and had, along with others, been endeavouring to deal with it, he could not give any express promise regarding the course of the Government respecting the Bill. Sir H. Cross, after remarking upon the satisfactory circumstances that the Criminal Law was much more merciful now than it was half a century ago, argued in favour of a better definition of the term "murder," one of his reasons being the bad effect on the populace of seeing so many persons who were convicted of wnat was called murder, afterwards reprieved by the Home Secretary. The common people did not understand by what rules he was guided, though they were founded on certain well-understood principles. A better definition of murder would relieve the Home Secretary of a great deal of this kind of business, although the prerogative of mercy would, of course, still be preserved. Having pointed out several objections to the Bill, he advised the author of the Bill to be content with this discussion and to undertake to proceed no further with the measure if the House read it a second time as an admission of the necessity of dealing with the subject. Mr. Pearse gave this undertaking, The Bill Ni as then read a second time.