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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 771: COMMITTEE ON THE CRIMINAL CODE.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

COMMITTEE ON THE CRIMINAL CODE.

Early this session the attention of parliament was called to the state of the criminal code: a subject deeply interesting to the best friends of humanity. Philanthropists had long deplored the state of our statute-book, more than two hundred crimes being defined by it as worthy of death. This state of things had been denounced as a national disgrace, and Sir Samuel Romilly had frequently brought it under the notice of parliament, and in some instances had been the means of softening down the rigour of our laws. That great man was now dead; but in this session the subject was taken up by Sir James Mackintosh, who proved to be a worthy successor to the deceased philanthropist. A petition from the corporation of London, complaining of the increase of crime, and pointing out the commutation of capital punishment, was referred to a committee for the examination of the discipline and police of the different prisons throughout the country. The appointment of this committee was moved by Lord Castlereagh; but it was thought by some that a distinct committee should be appointed, for the purpose of taking the whole subject into consideration. A motion to this effect was made by Sir James Mackintosh on the 2nd of March; and though Lord Castlereagh opposed it, as unnecessary, it was carried by one hundred and forty-seven against one hundred and twenty-eight. In his speech on this occasion, Sir James Mackintosh, after setting forth a great variety of facts and observations, illustrating the system of subterfuge which the extreme severity of the law in many cases had produced among prosecutors, witnesses, and jurors, with the consequent impunity and increase of crime, proceeded to explain his views of melioration, observing that it was neither his wish nor intention to form a new criminal code. He did not, he said, even propose to abolish capital punishment; but, on the contrary, he regarded it as a part of that right with which societies are endowed. He held it to be, like all other punishments, an evil when unnecessary; but capable, like them, of producing, when sparingly and judiciously inflicted, a preponderance of good. He aimed not at the establishment of any universal principle; his object was, that the execution of the law should constitute the majority, and its remission the minority of cases. Subsequently Sir James divided the cases connected with capital punishment into three classes: those in which it was always, those in which it was frequently, and those in which it was never put in force. The first and second of these cases he proposed to leave untouched; the third, which comprised more than one hundred and fifty crimes, he contended should be expunged from the statute-book, as a monument of barbarous times, disgraceful to the character of a free and enlightened nation.