object, he should now move the adjourn- | tatingly replied, "Yes; I will bring it forment of the debate till this day week.

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient, instead of carrying out the punishment of death within prisons, that Capital Punishment

should be abolished."

He felt some difficulty and hesitation in asking the attention of the House to the Motion of which he had given notice. In the first instance, he would express his extreme regret at the absence of his hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Ewart), whose name had been so closely connected with the amelioration of the criminal law, and who had done so much to abolish capital punishment. His reason for bringing forward this Motion now was, that he had a strong conviction that capital punishment was inexpedient and unnecessary; that it did not ensure the purposes for which it was enacted; that it was unjust in principle; that it involved not unfrequently the sacrifice of innocent human life; and further, that it afforded an escape for many guilty of atrocious crimes. Holding these opinions, he could not permit to pass an Act which proposed to re-enact the punishment of death without entering his solemn protest against it, and submitting the reasons why he thought it inexpedient that capital punish. ment should be inflicted. The late division on this question was no test whatever of the feeling of the House on the question of capital punishment. He was now asked, "Will you bring forward a Motion for the abolition of capital punishment in the face of the frequent murders, of the increase of the crime of murder-at a time when no doubt there are influences at work"-to

which he would not particularly allude -" which aggravate the crime to an extent almost unprecedented?" He unhesi

ward now, because, if my principle is good for anything, it is good at all times and under all circumstances." He would remind the House that the atrocious murders which were now being committed, and which they all so much deplored, were murders which were committed under the present law, and he believed would not be

committed under the altered state of the law which he desired to introduce. The question he had to deal with was- - by what means could they best stop the crime of murder? He disavowed emphatically any sympathy with crime-he disavowed any maudlin sentimentality with respect to this question. He was sure his right would agree with him that the question hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) between them was, how best to prevent the crime of murder. He said, without fear of contradiction, that almost in every instance in which capital punishment had ceased to be inflicted for certain crimes those crimes had lessened in frequency and enormity since its abolition; yet, as regarded murder, where the punishment of death was still retained, the crime had increased not only in number but enormity. In proof of that allegation he might quote statistics; but the fact was well known, and he would not take up the time of the House by doing so. It was also not to be denied that this was

a question upon which there had been a very considerable change in public opinion within a comparatively short period of time. Some of those who had the administration of the law in their hands, and some of those who had occupied the position of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gathorne Hardy), had come to the conclusion, at which he arrived many years ago, that capital punishment was undesirable-that it was unnecessary—and that the time had arrived when some other system ought to be adopted. Surely they were not succeeding in putting down murder. They had for centuries tried the lex talionis-the life for life principle-and they had miserably failed, and murder still stalked abroad. Earl Russell, in the introduction to the new edition of his work on the English Constitution, thus expressed himself as being favourable to the abolition of capital punishment

"For my own part, I do not doubt for a moment

either the right of a community to inflict the punishment of death, or the expediency of exercising that right in certain states of society. But when I turn from that abstract right and that

abstract expediency to our own state of society- mercy, and mercy was extended. Then when I consider how difficult it is for any Judge there was the case of Alice Holt. She, too, to separate the case which requires inflexible justice from that which admits the force of mitigating was pregnant; but the Home Office, havcircumstances-how invidious the task of the Se-ing got wiser by this time, would not bring cretary of State in dispensing the mercy of the Crown-how critical the comments made by the public-how soon the object of general horror becomes the theme of sympathy and pity-how narrow and how limited the examples given by this condign and awful punishment-how brutal the scene of execution-I come to the conclusion that nothing would be lost to justice, nothing lost in the preservation of innocent life, if the punishment of death were altogether abolished. In that case a sentence of a long term of separate confinement, followed by another term of hard labour and hard fare, would cease to be considered as an extension of mercy. If the sentence of the Judge were to that effect, there would scarcely ever be a petition for remission of punishment, in cases of murder, sent to the Home Office. The guilty, unpitied, would have time and opportunity to turn repentant to the Throne of Mercy."

her to trial until after the birth of her child. Then they brought her to trial, sentenced her to death, and carried out the execution. Against the injustice of such a proceeding he had at the time most earnestly protested. A practical point most serious to the interests of society was this: numbers of criminals had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes, because of the unwillingness of juries to incur the possibility of convicting the innocent. He believed it was on this ground that Mr. Waddington, the former Under Secretary at the Home Office, came almost to the opinions that he (Mr. Gilpin) entertained. He knew it did not appear in his evidence before the Royal Commission; but Mr. Waddington told him though looking at the matter from a different stand-point and urged by different arguments, still he had very nearly come to his (Mr. Gilpin's) opinions that it would be desirable for the interests of society at large that the abolition of capital punishment should take place. He (Mr. Gilpin) believed it was not too much to say that there were men and women walking about red-handed amongst us-persons unquestionably guilty of the most atrocious murders-who, had the punishment for their crimes been other than capital, would be now immured in prison, utterly unable to repeat such crimes as those for which they had been already tried. This arose from the unwillingness of re-juries to convict-an unwillingness which did them honour-unless they had evidence positive and indisputable. It was right that evidence which would suffice to convict a man where the punishment would be fourteen years, or imprisonment for life, should be regarded as utterly insufficient to convict a man when the sentence would send him out of the world. Some twenty years ago Charles Dickens wrote a series of letters in The Daily News on the subject of capital punishment; and in one, headed "How Jurymen Feel," he said

Now, the first objection which he (Mr. Gilpin) had to the punishment of death was its essential injustice. They gave the same punishment to the crime of a Rush or a Manning as they did to that of a Samuel Wright, and other less guilty persons. They had, under the present law, constant occurrences in which the feeling, intellect, judgment, and Christianity of the public were against carrying out the extreme penalty, even in cases where the law was clear and unmistakable as to the matter and there was every reason to believe that it had been justly administered by the Judge who had condemned the criminal. Take, for instance, the case of the woman Charlotte Harris. She was sentenced to death, being enceinte at the time. According to custom she was prieved until her babe was born, and then if the sentence of the law had taken its course she would have been hanged; but public opinion in the meantime had become so strong that the Home Office, even, he believed, in opposition to the judgment of the Secretary of State, had to give way, though the case was a fearful and atrocious one, and her life was spared. Richard Cobden, writing to him (Mr. Gilpin) with reference to this case, said

"You are right. It is truly horrible to think of nursing a woman through her confinement, and then with her first returning strength to walk her to the scaffold! What is to become of the baby at its birth? is it to lie upon the mother's breast until removed by the hand of Calcraft? Oh, horrible! horrible! Could you not have a meeting to shame the authorities."

Well, there were several meetings-one of 40,000 women, headed by Mary Howitt and they petitioned the Throne for

-

"Juries, like society, are not stricken foolish or motionless. They have, for the most part, an objection to the punishment of death; and they will, for the most part, assert it by such verdicts. As jurymen in the forgery cases (where jurors found a £10 note to be worth 398., so as not to come under capital punishment) would probably

reconcile their verdict to their consciences by calling to mind that the intrinsic value of a banknote was almost nothing; so jurymen, in cases of murder, probably argue that grave doctors

whether he or she were innocent or not. [executed no time was allowed to show It was only necessary again to refer to whether the crime was the result of a disthe well-known case of Samuel Wright, eased brain, or of that moral obliquity a working carpenter in Southwark, to which was rightly the subject of punishshow the inequality of the law, and that, ment. He felt grateful to the House for too, resulting simply from the character of the indulgence they had shown him on the punishment. He believed no jury a subject which had occupied his attention would have found Wright guilty on the for twenty years. Now, he would ask, charge of murder, and that no Judge but what was capital punishment? The punone would have left him for execution. ishment of death? No, it was not that. The prisoner, it was true, pleaded guilty The sentence of death was decreed upon to the crime, and neither the counsel nor all of us by a higher than a mortal Judge. the Court could induce him to retract the We but antedated the sentence, and by plea; but it was clear from the facts of how much this was done no man could the case that this was not a case of wilful know. A man might be sent to the murder. The man was awoke in the gallows who, according to medical opinight, and was dragged out of bed by a nion, could not live three months-and, violent woman with whom he lived. He in fact, a man had been recently executed, struggled with her, and seizing his razor, of whom the medical man said he could not which was lying in his way, without pre- live three months if he died in course of meditation he killed her. He was brought nature, and another man with a prospect up for trial, and he pleaded guilty. They of a long life. But what was the punishcould not expect a carpenter to be trained to ment? It was not death; it was antedating the niceties of the law, and it could not be the sentence passed upon us all by the Most wondered at that he, a conscientious man, High. From ten thousand pulpits in the determined to plead guilty. Almost at the land, they were told, and rightly told, that last moment a very large body of his fellow- for the repentant sinner the gates of Heaven working men came up to the Home Office were open, whether his death was a violent to plead that his life might be spared. one or not; and yet in the face of those The present Government was not then in sermons they said he did not mean that office. [Mr. BUXTON: Who was the Home the Judges say it in so many wordsSecretary?] His right hon. Friend the "Your crime is so great that there can be Member for Morpeth (Sir George Grey). no forgiveness with man; but appeal unto It was thought, most unwisely in his God and he may forgive you if you appeal opinion, that the appearance of so large a in the right way and pay due attention to body of working men on such a subject was your religious advisers." We told the crian attempt to terrorise the Home Office, minal in one breath that his crime was too and a deaf ear was turned to their plead- great for man to forgive-that he was not ings, which might wisely have been granted. fit to live on earth, but we commended him Samuel Wright was executed, and that in to the mercy of the Highest. We said, in the face of Charlotte Windsor, the hired effect, that those feet "which would leave murderess of babies, who, to solve some no stain on the pure pavements of the of the subtleties of law, was brought from New Jerusalem would leave the polluting one part of England to another, and after mark of blood upon the ground that all was only imprisoned for life. He could mortals tread." He knew not how to esnever forget the morning of that execution. cape from this argument. If criminals The people in the neighbourhood, instead were fit to die the time of their going of rushing to see the execution, had their to Heaven was hastened; and if not blinds drawn down. It was a case which fit to die, they were allowed to go with all it would take a long time to wipe out from their unexpiated crimes on their heads be the memories of the people of that neigh- fore their final Judge. If we believed that bourhood. That happened about the time faith which we professed, then the greater that Townley, another murderer, was ac- the sin the greater the need for repentance; quitted on the ground of insanity-a plea and it was something monstrous that we which his subsequent suicide showed to be should set ourselves up to decide that true. But the question of insanity was a fortnight from the date of his senone of the most uncertain character; the tence was enough time for the worst murdividing line was disputed by doctors, and derer to make his peace with God. If even by doctors in divinity; and the result we believed there was need for that peacewas that in the case of men who were making, let us give the murderer the time

MR. LEEMAN seconded the Amend-"choked" himself. This they would ment.