gard for it, by the adoption of a rule The very fact that death punishment is that he who violates that right in ano- more shocking than any other to the ther forfeits it for himself, and that imagination, necessarily renders the Courts while no other crime that he can commit of Justice more scrupulous in requiring the deprives him of his right to live, this shall. fullest evidence of guilt. Even that which There is one argument against capital is the greatest objection to capital punishpunishment, even in extreme cases, which ment, the impossibility of correcting an I cannot deny to have weight-on which error once committed, must make, and does my hon. Friend justly laid great stress, make, juries and Judges more careful in and which never can be entirely got rid of. forming their opinion, and more jealous in It is this-that if by an error of justice an their scrutiny of the evidence. If the innocent person is put to death, the mis-substitution of penal servitude for death in take can never be corrected; all compensation, all reparation for the wrong is impossible. This would be indeed a serious objection if these miserable mistakesamong the most tragical occurrences in the whole round of human affairs-could not be made extremely rare. The argument is invincible where the mode of criminal procedure is dangerous to the innocent, or where the Courts of Justice are not trusted. And this probably is the reason why the objection to an irreparable punishment began (as I believe it did) earlier, and is more intense and more widely diffused, in some parts of the Continent of Europe than it is here. There are on the Continent great and enlightened countries, in which the criminal procedure is not so favourable to innocence, does not afford the same security against erroneous conviction, as it does among us; countries where the Courts of Justice seem to think they fail in their duty unless they find somebody guilty; and in their really laudable desire to hunt guilt from its hiding-places, expose themselves to a serious danger of condemning the innocent. If our own procedure and Courts of Justice afforded ground for similar apprehension, I should be the first to join in withdrawing the power of inflicting irreparable punishment from such tribunals. But we all know that the defects of our procedure are the very opposite. Our rules of evidence are even too favourable to the prisoner and juries and Judges carry out the maxim, "It is better that ten guilty should escape than that one innocent person should suffer," not only to the letter, but beyond the letter. Judges are most anxious to point out, and juries to allow for, the barest possibility of the prisoner's innocence. No human judgment is infallible: such sad cases as my hon. Friend cited will sometimes occur; but in so grave a case as that of murder, the accused, in our system, has always the benefit of the merest shadow of a doubt. And this suggests another consideration very germane to the question.

cases of murder should cause any relaxation in this conscientious scrupulosity, there would be a great evil to set against the real, but I hope rare, advantage of being able to make reparation to a condemned person who was afterwards discovered to be innocent. In order that the possibility of correction may be kept open wherever the chance of this sad contingency is more than infinitesimal, it is quite right that the Judge should recommend to the Crown a commutation of the sentence, not solely when the proof of guilt is open to the smallest suspicion, but whenever there remains anything unexplained and mysterious in the case, raising a desire for more light, or making it likely that further information may at some future time be obtained. I would also suggest that whenever the sentence is commuted the grounds of the commutation should, in some authentic form, be made known to the public. Thus much I willingly concede to my hon. Friend; but on the question of total abolition I am inclined to hope that the feeling of the country is not with him, and that the limitation of death punishment to the cases referred to in the Bill of last year will be generally considered sufficient. The mania which existed a short time ago for paring down all our punishments seems to have reached its limits, and not before it was time. We were in danger of being left without any effectual punishment, except for small offences. What was formerly our chief secondary punishment transportation-before it was abolished, had become almost a reward. Penal servitude, the substitute for it, was becoming, to the classes who were principally subject to it, almost nominal, so comfortable did we make our prisons, and so easy had it become to get quickly out of them. Flogging-a most objectionable punishment in ordinary cases, but a particularly appropriate one for crimes of brutality, especially crimes against women -we would not hear of, except, to be sure, in the case of garotters, for whose peculiar

MR. HIBBERT thought the speech of

should have been made on the second reading of the Bill. There were many countries in which private executions were established without the inconveniences asserted to be inseparable from them.

benefit we re-established it in a hurry, immediately after a Member of Parliament the hon. Member (Mr. Darby Griffith) had been garotted. With this exception, offences, even of an atrocious kind, against the person, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Neate) well remarked, not only were, but still are, visited with penalties so ludicrously inadequate, as to be almost an encouragement to the crime. I think, Sir, that in the case of most offences, except those against property, there is more need of strengthening our punishments than of weakening them and that severer sentences, with an apportionment of them to the different kinds of offences which shall approve itself better than at present to the moral sentiments of the community, are the kind of reform of which our penal system now stands in need. I shall therefore vote against the Amendment.

:

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question." The House divided:-Ayes 127; Noes 23: Majority 104.

Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.

Bill considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 struck out.

Clause 3 (Execution to be within Prison).

MR. DARBY GRIFFITH expressed his opinion that, in introducing the element of privacy into executions, they would do their best to imitate the crime itself. It was, of course, a deed of violence. In taking away the element of publicity, they were taking away the chief authority for the act, which was to be sought, not in any written statute, but in the common feeling of mankind seated in the heart. This doing away with the consensus populi would be to realize the prediction that if they abolished publicity it would be impossible to maintain capital punishment at all, because the effect would be revolting to human feeling. They would only show that they were afraid of carrying out their own principle of capital punishment. It might be true that, when a crowd was collected at executions, scenes and incidents revolting to moral feeling took place; but this might equally occur if a number of people were admitted to what was called a private execution.

MR. NEWDEGATE concurred with the argument of the hon. Member for Devizes. He admitted that private executions prevailed in various countries; but there was no country in the world in which respect for the law was so high and deep as it was in England. The principle of secresy which the Bill contained was objectionable, because it would bring the carrying out of the law into suspicion and diminish the force of the law. Secresy in matters of this kind would excite against the Executive an amount of odium that must be deplored, and which had never previously was, that the execution of a person was the attached to it. The principle of our law act of the whole nation, and that being so, it should be public, in order that that portion of the nation residing in the immediate neighbourhood of the crime might, if they chose, attend and see their own punish

ment carried out.

MR. M'LAREN said, he entirely disagreed in the views taken by his hon. Friend on the other side. Even supposing that the scriptural argument could be maintained, and that the text, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," was correctly interpreted, which he by no means admitted, where was it written that the shedding of blood should necessarily take place in the midst of a crowd composed of the most profligate and worthless part of the population that could be collected? Did the spectacle do good to the classes who furnished these crowds? All the evidence went to show that instead of doing them good, it had a tendency to demoralize them. The clauses of the Bill would insure every necessary publicity, and he cordially thanked the Government for the measure.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK thought the Bill a move in the right direction-that was to say, towards the total abolition of capital punishment. Public executions were an evil. He himself had had more than once to sentence numbers of persons in the police-court for robbing at executions. He asked whether "within the walls" of the prison would be interpreted within the external boundary walls or actually within the prison itself?

MR. GATHORNE HARDY: The ex- | hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. ternal walls. Newdegate) objected to all punishments carried out privately as unconstitutional, was he prepared to revive the abominable practice of public flogging? There was no objection to the clause.

MR. DARBY GRIFFITH said, with reference to the remarks of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hibbert), that if any change took place from private executions it would most certainly not be to public executions, but to the total abolition of capital punishment; the national aversion to secresy would enforce this abolition.

MR. NEWDEGATE said, he objected to flogging prisoners, because to degrade men was not the best way to fit them to continue in society. But the case of capital punishment is totally different, and the old principle of English law is that if a citizen of the country is to be deprived of his life the execution ought to take place in the face of the public.

MR. M. CHAMBERS said, that if, as some predicted, the effect of passing the second reading of this Bill were to lead to the abolition of capital punishment, he should assuredly regret that he had been among its supporters. He could not agree in that prediction. He for a long time considered private executions anti-English; but the majority of the country, or at any rate of the House, has now decided the question. He protested against the representation of the hon. and learned Member for Tiverton (Mr. Denman) that juries had violated their oaths-[" No, no!"]-for violating their oaths it is, because they objected to the penalty of death.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 4 (Sheriff, &c. to be present).

MR. DENMAN admitted that one reason why he had voted for the second reading of the Bill was because he believed it was a step towards total abolition. But even assuming that capital punishment was to be maintained in perpetuity, was it not far better that it should be carried out within the prisons, and thus avoid the horrible and disgusting scenes that took place at public executions? One great stumbling block in the way of total abolitionists hitherto had been the want of a sufficiently strong public opinion to justify their proposal; private executions would, he believed, remove the difficulty by leading the public to the opinion that it was not necessary to put a person out of the world for the public safety when he could be well secured from doing harm by closely confining him in prison. The hou. and learned Gentleman said that, in the case of Palin, the first murder case he had ever defended, if the punishment had been anything but death the prisoner would have been convicted, because there was MR. NEATE said, that even if the the plainest evidence against him. Palin House agreed to deprive executions of their was afterwards transported for fifteen public character, there was much that years, and finally committed a capital might and ought to be done to give sooffence, for which he was executed. But lemnity to executions within the walls of the that he did not wish to inflict a speech prison. He wished, for instance, that the upon hon. Members he might have cited sheriff present should be the High Sheriff; different cases in which criminals, un- and he further thought that the foreman of doubtedly guilty, had escaped conviction the grand jury and at least three of the through the repugnance of juries to doom grand jury ought to attend the executhem to the extreme penalty of the law. It tion. ["Oh!"] The clause, as it stood, would not be long, he thought after this was founded on a total misconception of Bill passed, before public opinion would the nature and object of capital punishdeclare that a secret act of assassination ment. Something should be done to supwithin the gaol was not necessary or ex-ply the want of publicity by the presence pedient. A plan had been suggested by of proper representatives of the public. If Sir Walter Crofton, a very high authority on such a subject, under which prisoners might be confined for life, and practically without hope, in the interior of some prison, so that society would run no risk of their escape from prison, and would avoid the risks it now ran, in many cases, from their total impunity, owing to the unwillingness of juries to inflict an irrevocable sentence. MR. RUSSELL GURNEY said, the VOL. CXCI. [THIRD SERIES.]

he were asked to name a suitable hour and place for the purpose, he should say New Palace Yard at four o'clock. ["Oh, oh !"] As he was sure there would be a very strong feeling in the country against the Bill he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would allow a sufficient time between the Committee and the third reading to enable the House to learn what was thought of it out of doors. The 2 M

to admit the representatives of the Press | were present. He held that the decision and other persons of respectability who, in the opinion of the authorities, ought to be present at the execution.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK pointed out that boys and young girls might be excluded, as they were now from Courts of Justice in certain cases.

of what persons to be admitted should not be left entirely to the discretion of the sheriff and visiting justices. He thought it would tend to the satisfaction of the people of this country that the admission should be ensured of those who would faithfully report what took place on such occasions.

Amendment proposed, after the word "" to insert the words "and so prisoner, many reporters of the public press."(Mr. Alderman Lawrence.)

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL said, the reason why boys and girls were sometimes kept or ordered out of Court was that the Judge is assumed to have supreme" control over the discipline of the Court, though some people doubted whether they have so much authority; but if this Amendment were adopted the sheriff would be bound to act according to the words of the statute, and to admit the public indiscriminately.

MR. DARBY GRIFFITH thought what was proposed by the Bill would be very like a select audience. It would probably come to admitting people by ticket.

MR. M'LAREN suggested the addition of words to the effect that the sheriff should admit such reporters for the newspapers connected with the county or borough as he might deem proper.

MR. DENMAN, while agreeing with the spirit of his hon. Friend's Amendment, thought it quite superfluous and unnecessary. Under the term "persons, the representatives of the Press would be admissible.

MR. ALDERMAN LAWRENCE thought that the representatives of the Press should have a right to be present, instead of their admission being at the discretion of the authorities, who, perhaps, might in some cases think it desirable that the public should not be furnished with a full account of the proceedings. He should therefore take an opportunity of moving an Amendment to that effect, and would certainly divide the Committee upon it.

MR. HIBBERT opposed the Amendment as unnecessary, seeing that it must be left to the discretion of the sheriffs and the visiting justices to say how many people could be accommodated.

MR. M. CHAMBERS could not see the use of adding the words, "of the general public" after "persons," as the latter included the former.

MR. ALDERMAN LAWRENCE moved the addition of the words, "and so many reporters of the public Press," the effect of which would be to secure the attendance of the representatives of the Press, so that the public might know what official persons

Question put, "That those words be there inserted."

- Ayes 24;

The Committee divided :-
Noes 46 Majority 22.

Clause agreed to.
Clause 5 agreed to.

Clause 6 (Coroner's Inquest on Body).

MR. ALDERMAN LAWRENCE asked, if the representatives of the Press would be allowed to attend the inquests? Were those inquests to be private or public?

MR. GATHORNE HARDY: The inquests will be conducted on precisely the same principles as at present.

MR. ALDERMAN LAWRENCE: Will they be open to the public?

MR. GATHORNE HARDY: They will be as open to the public as Coroners' inquests held in prisons now are.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK said, a sheriff might have particular views of his own with regard to the admission of unofficial persons to an execution; and supposing the sheriff excluded such persons, who were to be witnesses at the Coroners' inquests?

MR. GATHORNE HARDY: If the hon. Gentleman thinks that an execution can be carried on without witnesses, I do not think so. There must be witnesses, whatever reliance may be placed upon their testimony.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK: I understand that there may be official persons present; but will that satisfy the public? This should be arranged beforehand. If the sheriff did not admit any of the public, who were to be the witnesses but the gaoler and hangman ?

MR. DARBY GRIFFITH complained that the matter was treated with levity on the Treasury Bench, and regretted to observe that the House seemed ready to relieve itself from a serious subject by ebullitions of that kind. There might be a crotchety sheriff, of opinion that it was in