hoped, eventually produce such alterations as may remove from our judicial code, the imputation of cruelty on the one hand, and prevent the impunity of the criminal on the other.*

Offenders of every

In fact it is in this ill-judged lenity, or rather inefficacy of the law, that we discover one great cause of the extraordinary profligacy and depravity of the present day. description, hardened and instructed in wickedness, are acquitted by our courts and liberated from our gaols, to renew their depredations on the community. Such is the inevitable consequence of enacting a punishment wholly inapplicable to the crime, that the public suffers whilst the criminal escapes. He has indeed been meshed in the great net of the law,

*May this expectation be accomplished! for, since the above was written, the world has been deprived of the illustrious individual to whom it relates, and can now only avail itself of the lessons which he has left for its improvement! May we not, however, venture to hope, from the sincere sympathy and universal grief which this event has occasioned, that the cause he so warmly espoused, and the sentiments he so forcibly expressed, are deeply felt by the nation at large? And that his loss will, as far as possible, be repaired by an increased determination on their part to promote the great and beneficent objects which he so faithfully pursued? Such a result of his labours may delight bis spirit, and add to his happiness in the regions of the blest.

but this net retains scarcely one in a thousand,* and he has escaped so often, that he has little fear of encountering another trial. Such is the acknowledged barbarity of our laws, and such the more enlightened and humanized state of the public feeling, that they are no longer compatible with each other. Accordingly we perceive on every hand indications that a further perseverance in our present track will not long be possible. Whilst our institutions continue in their present form, persons injured frequently will not prosecute-witnesses will not attendjuries will not convict, and judges cannot condemn. In the mean time, guilt and rapacity raise their heads with renewed insolence, and

4

It was stated in the House of Commons, in the debate on the shop-lifting and canal bills (Feb. 1810) that out of 1872 persons who had, in the course of seven years, been committed to Newgate, for stealing in dwelling houses, only one was executed.

+ "At Carnarvon Sessions (1818) J. Jones, a drover, was tried for uttering forged bank-notes, and, notwithstanding thirty-one witnesses established the charge, and Mr. Glover, inspector to the Bank of England, traced thirty-nine notes to have been paid by the prisoner, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Next day, the same prisoner was indicted for having forged notes in his possession, and the jury again returned a verdict of not guilty.”—The records of our Courts of Justice abound with similar instances.

brave the ministers of law on the seat of justice. Such a state of things cannot, it is evident, admit of delay. It has been proposed by many excellent men, that attempts should be made to apportion punishments to offences, so that every crime should have its appropriate penalty; but, to say nothing of the acknowledged and numerous difficulties which must attend the completion of such a task, if the public are to wait till the endless diversity of opinion to which this subject would give rise be reconciled, all prospect of redress would be hopeless. Let it not however be imagined, that the public depredator, the hardened criminal, is to be suf fered to persist in his guilt. Let his hopes of impunity be dispelled, and his fears be awakened by buildings rising in every county and every city of the kingdom, calculated to repress his enormities, to subdue his obstinacy, to form him to new habits and better dispositions, to render him sensible of his misconduct, and enable him to provide for himself by honest industry:-let the Courts of Justice, instead of dismissing offenders, to commence a new career of crimes, deliver them over to these no less effective than truly benevolent institutions; where, as has already been shewn by ample experience, there is every reason to expect that a great majority may be redeemed from their guilt, and restored to society; or, if this should not be found in

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all cases practicable, the community at large will derive, from the very efforts that may be made for this purpose, the inestimable benefit of being freed from the depredations of the innumerable hordes, who are at present its annoyance and its dread, and the sacred delight arising from the performance of the first of christian duties.

51

ON PUNISHMENTS OF INFERIOR DEGREE.

BUT, if the laws of this country neither profess to have in view, nor are calculated to produce, the moral improvement and restoration of the guilty, they have provided various modes of punishment, between the infliction of death and total impunity, by which the offender is made to feel, severely and permanently, the consequences of his crime. What use he may make of the discipline he thus receives, must rest with himself. In the conviction of the criminal, and the application of the punishment, the law, has performed its office. Let us now inquire what is the nature of these punishments, and what is their usual result.

The inferior punishments usually inflicted on criminals in this country, are transportation, corporal or disgraceful punishments, and imprisonment.

Banishment, says Cicero, is not a punishment, but a refuge and a shelter from punishment.* The lenity of the Roman law per

"Exilium non supplicium est, sed perfugium portusque supplicii."-Cic. pro Cacin.